The Beginning and the End
by Julia456
Summary: Apocalypse. I think that says it all, don't you?
1. Prologue

Notes: This fic is somewhat of a departure for me, as I have no idea where it's going or when I'll finish it - but I've just been wanting to write a multi-chapter fic for oh-so-long, because it looks like a lot of fun, and because I never write anything longer than vignettes. So, if at any point you feel inclined to wrinkle up your nose in disgust and flame the heck out of me... please don't. I am just trying to broaden my writing horizons. Okay? Okay. 

I've used excerpts from the Bible's Book of Revelation because that, of course, is the book that talks about the apocalypse. Most of the excerpts I've used are actually referring to God and not the antichrist or what have you. I figured I could use 'em anyway, seeing as how Apocalypse does have a high opinion of himself...

Edit Note 5/6/06: This is now hopelessly AU, but takes place shortly after "Shadow Dance".

* * *

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

PROLOGUE

He stood on a roof overlooking the school.

In the early-morning light, the shadows cast by the office building's bulky air conditioning vent were still deep enough to offer some concealment, but his position was chosen more from habit than anything else. He was too far away from the school to be seen by the students - too far away for most people to see the students, in fact. However, he was not most people, and he saw them clearly.

He watched a special few as they laughed and chattered their way into the main building. A sensation akin to loss tugged at him; he had missed so much. The feeling, though, was unwelcome, and he mentally shook it off, replacing it with anger.

This was a mistake. He was wasting time he didn't have, and for what? To satisfy some childish curiosity about _them_, when he already knew the stories by heart.

The bell rang, a distant sound but still audible to him, and the last stragglers ran inside the building. The kids had no discipline.

Show's over, he told himself silently. He'd see _them_ soon anyway.

He picked up the duffel bag at his feet and slung it over his shoulder once again as he left his position on the rooftop. There was a muffled clink from the bag - his weapons. The sound was reassuring, grounding, a reminder of why he was there.

Enough sentiment. He had work to do.

END PROLOGUE


	2. Like a Thief, part 1

I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you.  
- Revelation 3:3

* * *

Jean stared down at her notebook, feeling betrayed, frustrated, confused, and slightly sick. In that order.

Her best friend - her best girl friend - was a back-stabbing sneak, and her best boy friend was willingly aiding and abetting. Now her own brain had turned against her. How else could she explain the traitorous message she'd just written?

"Jean & Scott." With little hearts.

She looked around to make sure no one had seen it, knowing that her paranoia was completely unfounded and that the guilt was equally unreasonable. Then she scratched over the words with her pen until they were a meaningless black rectangle, and returned her attention to her history teacher's lecture.

Five minutes later, after a brief interlude of absent doodling, she realized that she'd added another footnote.

"Jean & Scott." One heart, a big one that embraced both names.

This time, she didn't scribble it out of existence. This time, the more she stared at it, the more she wanted to write it again. It looked... good.

She bit her lip, feeling lost. Scott didn't want to be her boyfriend; if he did, he wouldn't have gone to the dance with Taryn. And she already had a boyfriend anyway, although she was reluctant to give her relationship with Duncan that level of significance. No, she should just get over this silly crush and-

"Well, Ms. Grey?" someone said very close to her ear, and Jean jumped slightly in her chair, startled. The teacher was standing next her desk, tapping his foot with one eyebrow arched. The rest of the class was looking at her with undisguised anticipation. Even without telepathy, she could see how much they were loving it.

Fighting to keep what dignity she had left, she asked, "Could you repeat the question?"

The students broke into scattered giggles and the teacher scowled. "So you _weren't_ paying attention."

"Ah, no sir. I'm sorry." She tried to close the notebook, but he put the tip of his laser pointer firmly on the page, stopping her. Luckily, she managed to keep the incriminating sentence hidden under her hand.

"And what, exactly, is more interesting than my lecture?" He lifted the pointer and gestured at her to hand over the notebook. The giggling gave way to muted "uh-oh"s that didn't sound at all sympathetic. For a split second, she hated them all. What made her the bad guy? Just as quickly, she chastised herself; such an emotion was unfair of her.

"I'm waiting, Ms. Grey."

She bit her lip again and started to hand him the notebook, knowing that he was going to read it out loud and that she would spend the rest of her high school career living this incident down, and also knowing that she had no other choice because she was too much of a good student.

The classroom door opened just as his fingers were closing on the paper. He turned to see who it was, and his hand fell away from the notebook.

Jean immediately pulled the notebook back and closed it; now, if he asked for it, she could show him any page. She might've been a good student, but she wasn't stupid.

Several students made disappointed noises.

The visitor was an office aide, bearing a square yellow check-out slip. "Um, for Jean Grey?"

"That's me," Jean said with ill-hidden relief, practically leaping up from her desk. In one quick move, she had her backpack on and was hurrying across the room.

"Saved by the bell," someone stage-whispered, but by then she was in the hallway and shutting the door behind her.

"Says to go to the parking lot immediately," the aide informed her, giving her the life-saving piece of paper.

"Thanks," Jean said. She walked briskly down the hallway, reading the paper as she went. Wolverine had signed. That was a first.

Rogue was walking down the hallway, too, yellow check-out slip in one black-gloved hand. Jean walked a little faster to catch up with her.

"Hey," Jean said as she fell into step beside her teammate. They'd never been good friends, and they probably never would be - they were just too different - but they'd been on slightly better terms ever since their Siren adventures - or misadventures, whichever you wanted to call it. "What do you think is going on?"

"You're askin' _me_?" Rogue said, giving her a sidelong glance. "I don't know. But it's gettin' me out of math, so it can't be too bad."

"Yeah. I'm just curious, because Logan signed for us instead of the professor."

Rogue shrugged and pushed open one of the heavy glass doors that faced the parking lot. "Guess we'll find out soon enough."

The Institute's black van was parked at the curb with its engine running and Logan standing beside it. He looked less happy than usual. "Let's move it, huh?"

"Sorry," Jean and Rogue said, and jogged the last few yards. They climbed into the back of the van as he went around to the driver's seat.

"Get changed," he ordered, tossing their uniforms at them. "We don't have much time."

Jean automatically started switching clothes, asking, almost as an afterthought, "Why? What's going on?"

Before Wolverine could answer, a familiar burst of sulfurous smoke and light filled the front passenger of the van. Jean hastily tugged her uniform over her more important parts, hearing Rogue curse under her breath. She had to agree; having a teleporter around was convenient sometimes, but it could also be a genuine pain.

"Cyclops is prepping the Blackbird," Kurt told Wolverine in his German accent, then did a double-take at the back of the van. "Whoa!"

They were mostly dressed - the first thing you learned at the Institute was how to change clothes in thirty seconds flat - but Rogue snapped one of her gloves and warned, "Look and you'll wish you hadn't." Kurt wisely averted his eyes.

Wolverine grunted, possibly in amusement, but there was no way to tell with him. "You're not staying anyway, elf."

"This is so not fair!" Kurt exclaimed, indignant, crossing his furry blue arms. "Why do they get all the fun?"

"_They _don't have a science exam today. Now get back to class," Wolverine added with a jerk of his thumb in the school's direction. "You've been gone too long already."

Kurt sighed heavily and 'ported without further protest. Wolverine was pulling into traffic before the brimstone had cleared the air.

Jean finally got her headpiece into place and shook out her hair, not bothered at all by the high speed or the way the van was weaving in and out of lanes. "So wh-"

"Cairo, Illinois. Mutant. Xavier and Storm are already there. We're playin' calvary." He glanced at them in the rearview mirror. "I could only pull a few of you out - too suspicious. Three's pushin' it as is."

The third person was Cyclops; Wolverine had probably gotten Nightcrawler to teleport Scott to the Institute in order to save time. Great, she'd get to work with the person she'd been writing love notes about. _They weren't love notes_, she argued with herself. Right. Little hearts didn't have anything to do with love. No, no, Jean, that was totally platonic.

Her life was such a mess.

Rogue finished fastening her boots and asked, "It's not Magneto, Juggernaut, or any of the other usual suspects, is it?"

"Nope."

"Good," Rogue said, leaning back. "The way my day's going, I don't think I could take a real slugfest."

"We'll see," Wolverine said. Jean tilted her head, recognizing the tone. Whatever they were walking into, a fight was definitely a possibility. Not a problem, just as long as Scott didn't get hurt. As soon as she thought it, she wished she could take it back, because the slightly sick feeling returned with a vengeance, and she knew that was exactly what was going to happen.

The van screeched to a halt in front of the Institute and she forced the feeling down. They ran into the mansion and somewhat impatiently rode the elevators down to the hangar where, true to Kurt's word, the Blackbird was sitting ready for takeoff.

Scott was in the pilot's seat. He looked over his shoulder at them when they boarded, the ruby lens in his visor flashing, and Jean felt herself blush for no good reason. Guilt over a hopeless crush was not a good reason.

"Go," Wolverine ordered. And they were off.


	3. Interlude: The Alpha

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE

The darkness was vast. It was a living abyss that suffocated one's senses instead of filling them. He had spent thousands upon thousands of years in the darkness, cursing the magician and waiting. He waited throughout the centuries for the single moment when the doors of his prison would open and he would step into the world once again. Dreamed of it. Prepared himself for it.

It had been so long, and the darkness was so encompassing, that at times - once every few decades - he was inclined to wonder if perhaps the magician had been correct. Much of his years, though, he knew that he would escape. It was fated - written in the very stars that had once stretched above him in the desert sky. He merely needed to be patient.

And his patience had been rewarded. Fate had delivered unto him a servant with a most useful talent: the ability to bend other's minds to his own. He could remember the first triumphant brush of mental contact with his servant, the careful whispers urging the man closer to his prison. Closer, then closer still, and then - proximity was everything - he had entrapped his servant's mind as surely as he himself was trapped in this mountain prison.

The fool had tried to resist.

After a thousand years of disuse, his powers had swelled to the point where he truly felt as a god. No one could resist. His servant had crumbled as all things crumbled before his might.

Now, in the darkness, he felt the edges of his prison weaken. There was only one door left to breach, and on the other side the world was lying, ripe for the taking. His servant had the pieces of the third key, and the pathetic band of weaklings would not stop him.

He was unstoppable. He was eternal. He was a god on earth. No one could resist.

He laughed, long and low, and the darkness seemed to shrink away from the sound.

END INTERLUDE


	4. Like a Thief, part 2

Note: For those not speaking French (like me - amazing what you'll find in a dictionary),  
"cochon" means "pig."

* * *

I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you.  
- Revelation 3:3

* * *

Rogue tapped her fingers against the curved metal of the Blackbird's frame. She was not looking forward to whatever it was they were going to do; she hadn't been exaggerating when she'd told Jean and Logan that she was having a bad day. The morning Danger Room session had gone wrong in every way possible, culminating with her on the receiving end of a Cannonball blast. Her head still ached a little from that.

School just made things worse. Her only _normal_ friend was acting weird, and Rogue had the sinking feeling that she and Risty were never going to get back on track, not now that she'd explained what the Institute was all about. That hurt. She didn't make friends easily, and to lose one over a little thing like a mutant gene... it hurt. And then she'd gotten back her last test in math, which she hadn't studied for. It showed.

So far, she'd been a failure as a scholar, a friend, and a mutant. That pretty much covered everything. And, just to make her life more pathetic, there was still the whole "no touching" thing.

She frowned and sat back in her seat with a frustrated sigh. More to distract herself from her miserable existence than anything else, she asked Wolverine, "We have no idea who this mutant is?"

"I didn't say that." Wolverine made no move to explain for a moment, then sighed in that grudging, "I-hate-kids" way of his. Still looking straight ahead at the cloudscape, he admitted, "It's Mesmero."

"_Mesmero_?" Cyclops repeated sharply, turning to look at the older mutant. Rogue narrowed her eyes. Yeah, she knew why _he_ was so concerned, and it had a lot to do with Miss Popularity sitting next to her.

She sneaked a glance at Jean, who had gone very still and not a little pale, and felt a bit guilty for her hostile thoughts. Had to be a terrifying experience, having your mind controlled by someone else.

Wolverine held up a hand. "Look, kid, don't start. Xavier thinks we can handle Mesmero, and I ain't inclined to disagree. Last time we were playing nice. This time the claws are out."

"But we could be walking into a trap. How do we know the professor-"

"Hasn't been brainwashed into ordering us out here? Because these are standin' orders." He stopped, apparently waiting for Cyclops to put up further resistance. Scott didn't; Rogue could see that every line of his body was tense and he probably wanted to argue the point until he was just as blue in the face as Nightcrawler, but he said nothing. She admired his self-control, which was something that didn't come so naturally to her. Her mutation had forced to her to learn the skill, and some days she thought she'd learned it too well.

Jean made a small, strangled noise and Rogue looked at her in alarm - noticing out of the corner of her eye that Wolverine and Cyclops turned around to look too. Jean gave them all a weak excuse for a smile. "I'm okay. I just... was clearing my throat."

Wolverine grunted and turned back around.

"Are you sure?" Cyclops asked. Rogue wanted to say, "Aren't you supposed to be flying the plane?" but bit her tongue. It would only come out sounding petty and jealous, which it was, and just because she'd give her right arm to have someone be that concerned over her... well, it was no reason to look like an idiot. If Risty had taught her anything, it was to keep your dignity.

Jean smiled again, a more genuine expression this time, and said. "I'm fine, Scott."

_He already thinks you're fine_, Rogue thought darkly. She tried not to think it too loud, though, because Jean _was_ a telepath, latent or not.

"We're over Cairo," Cyclops said a minute later, voice neutral. They were still well above the cloud layer, keeping as far away from radar and other air traffic as possible. "Homing in on the professor's signal now."

Rogue sat up straighter and put her hands on her seat's harness, ready to unfasten it as soon as the word was given. Next to her, Jean did the same thing. Wolverine hadn't bothered with his harness in the first place, but he shifted slightly towards the hatch.

Rattled or not, they were a team, and they were ready to fight. She liked that. It was one of the reasons she stayed.

"Over the signal... He's outside the city." Cyclops flipped a few switches on the Blackbird's console, initiating the VTOL system, and began to ease the plane down. "Looks like some kind of fairground or something."

"The circus. Fits his MO," Rogue said. She wrinkled her nose. "Ugh. As though circuses weren't creepy enough already."

"I don't like the weather," Jean said, surprising them all. Rogue hadn't even noticed - she was too busy psyching herself up - but now she saw that the cloud layer they'd been flying over was the deceptively calm top of a very active storm cell. Maybe Jean wasn't as rattled as she'd thought, or maybe she was just trying to keep distracted. "It looks like Storm is... busy."

As if on cue, a bolt of lightning split the sky in front of the descending jet, and the almost-instantaneous thunderclap made the Blackbird vibrate slightly. They touched down a moment later, and Wolverine, already up and standing at the hatch, popped his claws. "So let's go give her a breather, huh?"

Rogue was the last one out, right behind Jean. There was no immediate sign of the professor, Storm, or Mesmero, and since the rain interfered with Logan's tracking ability, the calvary split up to conduct a quick search of the grounds.

She found herself checking the empty booths and tents on the midway. The circus was deserted, evidently on the verge of leaving town. It made the whole place more surreal, and she half-expected some plot from _The X-Files_ to unfold right in front of her. Not for the first time, she wondered if the whole circus was under Mesmero's control or if he merely used it as a convenient cover.

Let that tattooed sicko try to get into _her_ head; she wasn't a telepath, but she nonetheless had a heck of a lot of experience in shoving other people's thoughts out.

The unmistakable sound of an optic blast from the other side of the fairgrounds made her break off her search and run flat-out towards the noise. Passing a booth, she slid in the dirty grey mud, but caught her balance just in time - and saw a pair of red eyes glowing in the shadows of a tent.

She blinked, and the eyes were gone.

Imagining things or not? Another optic blast streaked across the sky and made the question moot. She took off again, jumping and skidding her way through the rows of tents and trailers until she came to the fight.

And it _was_ a fight.

The battlefield was framed by Mesmero's tent on one side and the charred, smoking ruins of the X-Men's black helicopter on the other.

The professor was next to the destroyed helicopter, still in his wheelchair - that was always a good sign - with his hands to his temples and a look of fierce concentration on his face. Storm was lying on the ground a few yards away, rain shrouding her body in mist. She was unconscious.

Wolverine was nowhere in sight, but Scott and Jean were circling around Mesmero, trying to catch him off-guard.

"Rogue! Keep him busy!" Cyclops called to her without taking his hand off his visor. "The professor can't take him down on his own!"

"Got it!" she called back. Easier said than done; unlike her teammates, she didn't have lightning bolts, energy blasts, or telekinesis at her disposal. There was only one way she could help to weaken Mesmero, aside from throwing circus trash at him.

She _really_ didn't want to. But she didn't have much choice.

Jean lashed out with a telekinetic blow that sent Mesmero staggering. Rogue took the opportunity to dart around behind the villain unseen, and stripped off one of her gloves.

"You miserable insects," he raged, regaining his balance. "You cannot stop this!"

Cyclops feinted to the right, Mesmero went left, and Rogue was there to intercept him. "I'm gettin' tired of your mouth," she said, pressing her bare hand against his equally bare neck. "Let's see if this shuts you up."

It was the way it always was, like turning on a faucet - no, a waterfall, a torrential deluge of memories and images and sounds and emotions that flashed through her mind too fast for her to comprehend - and then it suddenly came to a complete, painful, screeching stop. She felt like she'd hit a solid brick wall face-first, a wall that pulsed with some living, hateful... thing, and she pulled away from the mutant's skin with the last vestiges of self-preservation.

Dimly, she heard her teammates calling her name, but she couldn't focus on the sounds long enough to make any sense of them. It was all she could do to stay on her feet. The hateful thing pulsed in _her_ mind now, and she staggered off of the field of battle, looking for shelter, looking for something, anything...

Her knees buckled and she fell to the muddy ground, hands clenched around her head. She saw - she saw herself walking on a mountain - there was a door - and the thing was behind the door - behind it for a long time, and it wanted out. Oh, it wanted out. It was so powerful. It hated being locked up, and its hate made it stronger. Strong enough to reach out to her as she walked on the mountain, whisper sweet words of power in her mind. She was supposed to get the keys to set it free...

No. Not her. Someone else. Mesmero, that was it. She was looking at his memories. This wasn't her mission. None of it had any power over her. It was just absorbed data.

The hateful thing pulsed once more, faintly, and then it was gone.

Rogue opened her eyes, blinked a few times to clear her vision, and climbed to her feet again. The  
brick-wall feeling lingered, along with a general lightheadedness; she shrugged it off and took stock  
of the fight.

She'd come to rest not far from the professor and Storm. The professor was out now too. Psychic backlash, she realized belatedly. Whatever she'd dragged to the surface of Mesmero's mind was nasty, all right. Since Xavier was the only true telepath in the mental tangle, he'd taken the brunt of it.

She was going to catch all kinds of trouble for that mistake - if they made it out of here.

Scott and Jean were still fighting, more intensely now that the psychic battle was over. Mesmero looked winded, but not beaten, not by a long shot.

Wolverine was not there.

"Okay, girl, time for a new strategy," she told herself under her breath, looking around. Maybe she could run back to the Blackbird, bring the weapons to bear on... No. What she needed to do was find Wolverine. Hypnotism was no match for adamantium claws.

"I'm gonna find Wolverine!" she shouted.

"That would be helpful!" Jean called, and for once, Rogue wasn't annoyed at her superior air. It _would_ be helpful.

She backed up between two tents, trying to decide which way to go.

There was a humming noise above her, almost like electricity, and a glowing object shot out of nowhere and lanced into the ground at Mesmero's feet.

"What is this-" he started to snarl.

The object exploded.

It was more flash than bang, Rogue saw, but it made everyone jump back. Judging from the way the smoke curled over them, Jean had thrown up a telekinetic shield around her and Scott. Mesmero, unprotected, coughed and sputtered.

A figure jumped down from somewhere, landing a few yards in front of her - about halfway between her and the trio of fighters. Rogue couldn't see the person's face, but she could see a long brown duster, a shock of brown hair, and a metal staff pointed squarely at Mesmero. "This is for my brother, murderer!"

"The... thief," Mesmero said between coughs. He looked amused, in a sour way. "You are... in over your head, little boy."

"Non," the newcomer said, shaking his head. "Little boy" was inaccurate; Rogue thought he was about the same age she was. "_You_ are."

"Such confidence." Mesmero drew himself up straight again and gestured dismissively. "You are a fool just like your brother."

"Takes one to know one, _cochon_," the thief retorted, turning the staff in his hands and slowly advancing towards the trio. Mesmero did not appear to be worried in the least.

Cyclops and Jean were holding their ground, obviously waiting to see how this went down. Rogue briefly considered going after Wolverine again, and decided it was a bad idea. She wasn't going to leave her teammates in a situation like this. And speaking of teammates... A slight movement from Storm caught her attention.

" 'Bout time," she muttered, ducking under a tent line to reach the white-haired mutant. "Storm, wake up! Things are gettin' bad."

Storm's eyes fluttered open, and she managed to push herself into a half-sitting position. "Mesmero - has he -?"

"Not for lack of tryin'." She put an arm around her teacher's shoulders, helping her stand. "Can't you do anything?"

Storm put a hand to her forehead in pain, clearly disoriented. "I don't believe so, no."

"Great." She was missing school for _this_...?

"You killed Henri!" the thief shouted suddenly, reminding her that there were more players in this fight than X-Men and villain. She shifted a bit in order to see him better; he was indeed her age, maybe a year or so older, and, as Kitty might say, totally fine. His eyes glowed with an eerie orange-pink fire. What was it with mutants' eyes? Everyone's glowed or shone or went blank, like those of the woman she was holding up. Right now, though, Storm's eyes were tightly closed.

Mesmero actually chuckled. "Hard to prove _that_, little boy. An Assassin pulled the trigger, if you'll remember."

"You put him in the bullet's path," the thief snarled, producing a playing card from thin air, like a magician. Even from where she stood, Rogue could see the big, black spade on the card's face. She knew enough about fortune-telling to know the ace of spades was the death card, and sure enough, it started glowing with the same energy that spilled from his eyes - the same energy that had filled the first object. "Now - you gonna join him!"

From scarcely a yard away, he threw the card at Mesmero. An optic blast intercepted it and the card exploded in midair with a blinding flash. Rogue looked away quickly, shutting her eyes.

When she looked back, Cyclops had tackled the thief, Jean was running to the professor, and Mesmero... was gone.


	5. Interlude: The Omega

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE 

The tracking device beeped. He looked at it automatically, watching the information on altitude and speed scroll across the screen. Zero-zero. They had landed.

He'd half-suspected that the team would be moving soon, and that was the only reason he had risked entering the mansion, especially with his weapons on his back. It had been worth it; he knew more about their capabilities now.

With a sense of relief, he stopped using his telepathy to search the computer. It wasn't often that he chose to exercise that particular ability, and it always left him with a headache. Cerebro, however, was designed to be a telepathic interface as well as a traditional one. Using his telepathy was simply more expedient.

A good soldier knew when to sacrifice for expediency's sake.

He brought up his teleportation program and took a last glance at the large spherical chamber. Interfacing with Cerebro - or rather, reading _their_ files - had brought back memories of things he had seen and heard as an infant and forgotten, things his "mother" had told him of later when he was old enough to remember. One conversation held greater relevance than usual, here in the house where they'd lived. Did live.

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back?_

_No._

At least she hadn't lied.

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back?_

The phrase, spoken by a man he couldn't remember, seemed to echo around the room. Or perhaps only around his mind.

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back?_

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back?_

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back?_

So much concern, but that hadn't changed the outcome, had it? In the end, the choice had been made with the same dispassionate leadership that had always characterized-

"You're wasting time again," he told himself, growling. Dwelling on the past did nothing but make him want to hit things. He was done here; they would need him soon. "Bodyslide by one - Blackbird bound."

There was a flash of brilliant gold light, and then the room was empty.

END INTERLUDE


	6. With the Clouds, part 1

Behold, he is coming with the clouds ... and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.  
- Revelation 1:7

* * *

Scott was more concerned about his teammates than about the thief, even though the latter was doing his best to break free. He had the thief walking in front of him, arms pinned behind his back, and wished more than anything that the X-Men carried handcuffs like Batman. 

"You gonna let him get away, jus' like that?" the boy demanded, twisting around. He was younger than Scott, probably sixteen or so, but he had a sly, streetwise look that made Scott suspect they weren't going to be able to hold him very long.

Cyclops propelled him towards the other X-Men saying, "If it means making sure our people are okay - yeah, we are."

The thief made a disgusted noise and said something uncomplimentary in French. Cyclops ignored him, focusing instead on the others. Storm was standing on her own, with Rogue hovering anxiously nearby, and Jean was crouched next to Professor Xavier. From the look of fierce concentration on her face, he knew that she was trying to talk to him telepathically. He had to remind himself not to look at her longer than was appropriate. Now was not the time for distractions like that.

"Has anyone seen Wolverine?" he asked. Rogue had said something about going to find their erstwhile teacher, but then the thief had arrived and his priorities had shifted.

"Not since we landed," Rogue said, shaking her head.

"Someone lookin' for me?"

Cyclops turned around to see Wolverine striding across the churned mud of the recent battlefield. He was rubbing the back of his head and looked angrier than usual, which was saying something. "Yeah. Where have you been?"

Wolverine drew even with the thief and stopped, glaring at him with eyes narrowed. "Gumbo here decided to give me a concussion."

The thief gave him a broad grin. "Oops."

Wolverine's eyes narrowed further. "I'd return the favor, but I don't hit kids."

The grin vanished at the insult, replaced by a surly expression. Cyclops bit back a smirk; Wolverine had found his weak spot in seconds. Typical.

Wolverine gave the thief a last disdainful look and turned his attention to Cyclops. "How's Xavier?"

It was Jean who answered, rising and brushing off her hands with a simple, "Awake".

And the professor was indeed awake, if a bit dazed. Scott felt the atmosphere relax nonetheless. Without Professor X, they would be in a lot of trouble.

The professor shook his head as though to clear it and grimaced. "Awake, and in one piece - although I have felt better."

"I'm sorry, Professor," Rogue said immediately. "I didn't know-"

"It's all right, Rogue," the professor said, holding up a hand. "Next time, however, I would appreciate some warning."

As relieved as he was, Cyclops had some questions he wanted answered, and he saw no point in waiting any longer. Without loosening his grip on the thief's wrists, he said, "Professor Xavier, I don't understand. What happened here? Why didn't you bring us in the first place?"

The professor nodded. "An explanation _is_ in order. Mesmero has used his powers several times in the last few weeks; Cerebro has detected them all, but the locations were always too far away for us to reach before he moved on."

"But Illinois is close enough," Cyclops said, beginning to understand the events of the last half-hour. It made sense; take the 'copter and leave the faster jet for the backup team so that they would arrive at roughly the same moment.

"Yes, although it was a near thing. Storm and I arrived just as he was getting ready to depart. I thought that we would be able to hold Mesmero until Wolverine arrived with reinforcements. The fight proved otherwise."

"He attempted to take over my mind," Storm put in, shivering. "The professor was forced to telepathically knock me unconscious. Not something I'd care to repeat, but the alternative would have been far worse. Thank you, Charles."

"You're welcome, Storm. Now, I take it that Mesmero has escaped once again?"

"Yes sir." Cyclops released his grip on the thief's wrists, pushing him forward. With Wolverine present, he was more confident about their ability to keep the thief in their custody. No one sucker-punched Logan twice. "We did get someone, though."

"I see." The professor regarded the thief for a moment. "Who are you, and what business do you have with Mesmero?"

"He killed my brother," the thief said, grudgingly. Cyclops moved around to the thief's side, ready to act just in case he tried that exploding card trick with the professor. The other X-Men had gathered around and behind Professor Xavier in a semicircle - except Wolverine, who stood on the thief's other side and slightly behind him.

"Henri?" Storm asked, and got a short nod in reply. "Mesmero spoke of the Assassins, but you are Thieves' Guild, aren't you?"

The thief stiffened, but said blandly, "Guild? Never heard of it."

Storm stepped forward, putting a hand on her chest. "My name is Ororo. I was trained by Achmed el-Gibar, in Egypt."

There was a moment of silence, and then the thief broke into another grin. "Ororo, yeah. I heard it was you, stole that sapphire from Gideon."

"It was a ruby from Candra, and that was a long time ago," Storm said, smiling back. Scott wasn't surprised, and none of the X-Men seemed to be either; Storm's childhood career as thief wasn't talked about very often, but they all knew about it.

"Yeah, that was it." The apparent slip of memory didn't fool Cyclops; it had been a test, and the thief proved it by continuing, "The best pickpocket in Cairo, and the only one ol' Achmed let walk away - and wit' his blessin' at that. Legend in your own time, even over here."

Scott wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Storm blush faintly at the praise. She cleared her throat and gestured at the other X-Men, saying, "You can trust these people."

"In that case," the thief said with an ironic half-bow, "Remy LeBeau,_ je suis votre service_."

"How did the Guild become involved with Mesmero?" Storm asked.

Remy shrugged. "Cochon showed up one day, asking would we do a job for him in Paris. Not our turf, but we got connections, hahn? But the guild masters, they turn him down flat. He wanted us t' steal from people connected to the Assassins' Guild. Thieves and Assassins, we don't get along too good, so we show him the door. Only, on his way out, I saw him give Henri the evil eye, right, and next thing I know Henri's on a plane for Paris."

Softly, Jean said, "He pulled a mindbender."

"If that's what you call it," Remy said. A card, the ten of diamonds, appeared in his hand and he walked it through his fingers in what looked like a nervous habit. "I followed, but it was no use. Henri walked right in, stole whatever it was, walked back out. Didn't try to hide. Assassins had themselves an easy target that night." He closed his eyes briefly, then looked at the ground. "Spent his last breath handin' th' bag to Mesmero."

The small, icy sensation in the pit of his stomach had grown as he'd listened to the story, and now it took all the willpower Scott had not to shudder. The same thing could have happened to any of the hypnotized X-Men. It could have happened to Jean. Or - might as well drag out all the nightmare scenarios while he was at it - to his own brother, Alex.

And if it had... If it had, then revenge wouldn't sound like such a bad idea, he was sure of that.

Remy abruptly flicked the card away and shoved his hands into his duster's pockets. In a much harder voice, he finished, "And now the blood feud's started up again, meanin' N'awlins ain't safe for Thieves nor Assassins nor anyone caught in the middle, so the rest of my family is gonna die, all on account of that 'mindbender.' And you let him get away."

The last sentence was openly accusing, but aside from an uncomfortable shifting, none of the X-Men acknowledged it. Cyclops tilted his head; Remy was right - they'd let Mesmero get away. But the alternative - letting Mesmero be killed by a revenge-driven boy - was unthinkable.

He looked at Jean, silently asking her to do something. She gave him a "why me?" look, then asked, "Ah - how did he get away?"

"Magic trick, petite. Like that guy, Copperfield - makes airplanes disappear? Easy if you know how. Didn't think he did," Remy added, energy flaring briefly around his eyes. Cyclops understood. The thief wasn't as mad at them as he was at himself.

Wolverine shook his head. "More important question here is, 'where did he go?' "

"The mountain," Rogue said. Cyclops started; she was half-hidden behind Storm and keeping quiet, and he'd almost forgotten that she was there. Her face, pale even through the red lens of his visor, grew more animated as she explained. "That's where _it_ is. He has to bring the keys to the mountain. All the things he's been after - they're keys to unlock the doors it's trapped behind."

Storm, who hadn't been with them when they first encountered Mesmero, quietly mused, "So he _is_ being controlled by something more powerful."

"How you know that?" Remy asked. The question was directed in Rogue's direction, along with a frown.

"I saw it in his memories." She glanced at the professor, apparently still feeling guilty.

Remy gave her an exaggerated once-over, saying, "Huh - you went crawlin' through that mess of slime and still came out lookin' this good?" He winked and grinned a little wider. "Quite a trick, chere."

Rogue blinked hard several times, obviously taken aback and trying not to show it. She wasn't the only one. Scott's eyebrows rose behind his visor, and he saw similar expressions on Jean, Wolverine and Storm. Even the professor looked startled. And for good reason: as far as Scott knew, no one had ever flirted openly with Rogue. It bothered him a little, for reasons he wasn't willing to analyze at the moment, and because he didn't like it when people threw his team off their rhythm. If this guy was going to be disruptive, he was going to have to go.

"I... I - ah... thanks," Rogue managed to get out.

The professor cleared his throat. "The question remains - where is Mesmero going?"

"Tibet," a new voice rang out. Cyclops spun around, one hand on his visor's control dial. The man advancing towards them was tall, built like a linebacker, and had enough weapons to level a small country. One arm gleamed like metal. Armor, or something else? "Mesmero is going to Tibet. And that's where we're going."

Wolverine brandished his claws and took a fighting stance. "Oh yeah? And just who are you, bub?"

The man had a scar across one eye; the other one was perfectly blank. Whoever he was, Cyclops thought he had the appearance of someone who'd seen a lot worse than four mutant teenagers and three mutant adults. He certainly didn't look intimidated by Wolverine.

"My name is Cable."


	7. Interlude: The Alpha

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE

All was well. His servant was distressed, but he was not. He had encountered far greater obstacles over the millenia than a few children, gifted though they might be. Through his servant, he had controlled them once before, and he was more than confident that he could do so again. Perhaps this time, he would destroy them. Or perhaps he would maintain his hold on them indefinitely.

Yes, a fate worse than oblivion: eternal imprisonment.

The irony was not lost on him. It only served to make the thought all the sweeter.

Those among the gifted children who were suitable for the job would become the first seeds of his army. And with that army, he would build his empire anew - a simple task, surely. The world had changed since the magician had locked him away, but through his servant's eyes, he knew that its inhabitants remained the same weak, diseased people. Pathetic creatures, all of them, hardly fit to grovel at his feet. He would do away with that soon enough.

Only the strong survived. Only the strong were _worthy_ of survival. Bereft of his rule, the world had forgotten that lesson.

He would remind them.

Soon...

END INTERLUDE


	8. With the Clouds, part 2

Note: It's 7843 miles from Cairo, IL, to Lhasa, Tibet. The X-Men's Blackbird, at Mach 5 (roughly 3300 mph), would take just over two hours to reach Tibet. If they leave Illinois at 11 AM, that puts them in Tibet at 3 AM local time. (And my geography teacher thought I wasn't paying attention.) Xavier definitely contracts out to Stark Industries. 

The mountain and its cave are in Kashmir, not Tibet. It's called "creative license." Don't get mad.

* * *

Behold, he is coming with the clouds ... and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.  
- Revelation 1:7

* * *

Standing next to the professor, Storm had a fairly unobstructed view of the man who called himself Cable. At first glance, she'd thought him to be a mercenary - the weaponry, attitude and military buzzcut all indicated as much - and possibly after the thief. She had been out of the game for several years now, but even she had heard accounts of Remy LeBeau's exploits. The youngest son of the Guild's "king," he was supposedly wanted by law enforcement agencies around the world. She wasn't sure whether she hoped that Professor Xavier extended an invitation to him or not. A Guild thief could be trouble. So could this Cable, regardless of his intent. 

" 'Cable,' huh?" Wolverine said, bringing his claws up. "Never heard of ya."

Cable's eyes narrowed. He was standing motionless, but all of his weapons were in easy reach. "I didn't say that you had, old man."

The only response to that was a low growl. Storm tensed, ready to use her powers despite her headache. She was fortunate - they were all fortunate - that the tempest she'd created under Mesmero's command had never gotten beyond its preliminary stages. In the short amount of time since awakening, she'd been able to dispel most of it without taxing herself too greatly.

"Wolverine," the professor said, both rebuking and warning. Wolverine growled again, but lowered his claws. Gesturing at Cable, the professor asked, "Who are you, and how do you know that Mesmero has gone to Tibet?"

"I told you, my name is Cable. As to how I know - it's too long a story to get into here. I'll explain when we're en route to Tibet."

"_We're_ not going anywhere," Cyclops said. "Not until you explain."

_Good_, Storm thought. She remembered clearly a time when Scott would have stayed silent, deferring to the professor, Wolverine, or herself. It was gratifying to see their leader-in-training consistently rising to the job.

Cable's eyes narrowed still further, if such a thing was possible. Storm considered her options: a lightning strike to the mercenary's arm, if it was cybernetic, would overload the feedback circuits and likely immobilize him; if it was simply armor, the electrical shock would do the same. It might also do him serious - perhaps fatal - injury, and for that reason, she decided to summon a miniature tornado if such action was necessary.

However, Cable made no move to attack. Instead, he exhaled sharply and said, "Fine. Mesmero is working for a creature called Apocalypse, who's been imprisoned for the last two thousand years. If we don't get to Tibet before he's freed, then the entire world is doomed."

A very old fear unexpectedly blossomed in her chest, bringing with it memories of ethereal hands that grasped and clawed at her mind, and the painful, panicked feeling of walls beginning to close around her. Ororo pushed it all away firmly. She was not a child and this Apocalypse was not the shadow demon she had once been shackled to. Nor was he the hungan who had more recently attempted to use her as a living, soulless weapon.

Wolverine raised his claws again, growling, "What a load of -"

"No," the professor interrupted, moving his chair forward until he was barely a foot from Cable. "I believe that he's telling the truth."

The two men regarded each other silently with nearly identical expressions - the detached, clinical stare of a scientist looking at something interesting under his microscope. She wondered if they were holding a telepathic conversation.

Wolverine was not done. "C'mon, Charles - ancient monsters? _Apocalypse_? Gimme a break."

"I believe him as well," Storm said, catching Logan's eye and holding it. In a different voice, one meant to remind him of the supernatural forces lurking in her own past, she added, "Stranger things have happened."

He grunted and finally retracted his claws, apparently getting the idea. It was always hard to tell with Wolverine.

The professor abruptly broke off the staring contest with Cable and gestured for them to move out. "X-Men. We leave for Tibet immediately."

"Professor, we can't leave the helicopter-" Cyclops started, and Storm began to estimate the wind velocity needed to lift the wreckage into the nearby Mississippi.

Before she could do more than raise a gentle breeze, Cable drew one of the two large guns on his back, pumped the barrel like a shotgun, and fired at the helicopter. The wreckage glowed as the round impacted it, then exploded a heartbeat later with a muffled boom. "We're wasting time."

"Do that again and you won't have any time left to waste," Wolverine snarled. He had extended his claws once more and was crouched slightly, ready to leap at Cable. Storm took a few steps closer to her teammate and placed a restraining hand on his arm.

"Discuss it later," she said, the unspoken warning flashing in her eyes. Professor Xavier had declared that they would go to Tibet, and she had no intention of disobeying him.

Logan shook her off, straightening. He gave Cable a hard glare. "We will."

"Hey," Remy said, pulling his hands out of his duster's pockets and looking very much like an abandoned puppy, despite the Guild's trademark silver-and-fuschia body armor that he wore beneath the coat. "What about me?"

Storm felt all eyes, even the professor's, turn to her. Wonderful. Now _she_ had to decide the immediate future of a boy who was dangerous, preoccupied with revenge, and who served as a major distraction to at least one of her students - but who was also a skilled fighter and a fairly powerful mutant, both of which would be assets on this mission.

They could always kick him out later, she supposed, and, resigned to it, told Remy, "You will need a code name."

"Gambit," he said without a moment's thought. "On account I like t' take chances - right, chere?"

The question was directed at Rogue, who pushed past him with a curt, "Whatever."

The rest of the younger X-Men took her lead and began to jog towards wherever they had set the Blackbird down. Remy - Gambit - trailed after them, retrieving his staff from the ground as he went. The professor gave her a discreet nod and a telepathic, _I would have made the same choice_, before following his students.

Storm waited until it was clear that Wolverine would not try to gut Cable at the first opportunity and then joined the exodus. The ground beneath her feet was still a filthy mixture of mud and litter, but thanks to the restored sunshine, it was not the soup it had been five minutes ago. Her headache was also feeling better.

They would have clear skies on their flight to Tibet.

A loud thump ahead of her made Storm break into a run, but she slowed down almost immediately as the Blackbird came into view. The engines were warming up, but that wasn't the source of the noise. No, it was due to the two children at the base of the stairs.

Their newest teammate was leaning against the hull and rubbing his shoulder. "What'd I do?"

"Just leave me the heck alone," Rogue snapped, the anger and frustration in her voice almost palpable, and boarded the plane.

"Remy," the professor said from the hatch, rebuking him, but instead of adopting a remorseful attitude as the other students would have done, Gambit shrugged and whistled his way up the Blackbird's stairway. The professor's frown deepened slightly.

Storm sighed. Clear skies, yes - _outside_ the jet.

She boarded and, conceding the inevitable, took a seat in the back, which would give her a good view of the interior and its occupants. Wolverine shoved Cable towards one of the front passenger seats and took the seat directly across from the mercenary, where, no doubt, he would stay for the length of the flight.

As she fastened the harness over her chest, Cyclops engaged the VTOL system and announced, "I have our initial heading as north 359.6 degrees."

In the co-pilot's place, the professor nodded his approval, and everyone turned their attention to Cable.

"Okay, bub," Wolverine said. "It's story time. Spill it."

Without appearing to give Wolverine the slightest bit of attention, Cable said, "Apocalypse's real name is En Sabah Nur - 'The First One.' He's the first mutant, and still the most powerful. No one knows how old he is, but most estimates put his birth in approximately 4000 BC - the dawn of civilization. He conquered Egypt before the pharaohs built the first pyramids, then terrorized the rest of the world after the Egyptians drove him into exile. Around 200 BC, he met his match:  
a sorcerer called the Ancient One."

Wolverine made a face at that, but said nothing.

"The Ancient One imprisoned Apocalypse in a sacred Tibetan mountain and scattered the keys to the ends of the earth. I managed to track down a student of the Ancient One - a former surgeon named Stephen Strange."

Curious - she seemed to remember hearing that name before - Storm asked, "Where was he?"

Something like a smirk appeared on Cable's face. "Greenwich Village, New York City."

Gambit snorted. "Homme fits right in, I bet."

Cyclops leaned forward, frowning. "Wait, this 'Ancient One' guy is still alive?"

"No. According to Strange, he died in the 1960s." With an unhurried movement, Cable started to draw one of his smaller guns from its holster, making the other passengers tense, then paused at a familiar _snikt_ sound. "Easy, old man. I'm going to clean it, not shoot you."

"You wouldn't get the chance," Wolverine snarled. He kept his claws out. Storm sighed inwardly; there were times she couldn't stand the posturing, and there were times she appreciated the complex interplay of power. Right now, it was probably keeping them all alive.

Methodically dismantling the weapon in his hands with practiced speed, Cable continued, "Strange didn't know much, but he _was_ able to tell me where the mountain is, as well as the location of the entrance to Apocalypse's prison."

"If Apocalypse was so bad, why didn't the Ancient One just kill him instead of lockin' him up?" Surprisingly, it was Rogue who asked the question, and Storm looked at her askance. She was not usually prone to statements of that sort. "I mean, I _felt_ him, a little. He's all hate and evil. Why would you let something like that live?"

"The Ancient One believed all life to be sacred," Cable replied, his expression and tone making it clear that he didn't share that belief. "There was also a prophecy - from the Olmec - that Apocalypse's power would be needed to stop a celestial monster when it came to devour the earth."

The professor tented his fingers. "I don't suppose Strange will be helping us."

Cable shook his head. "When the Ancient One died, his spiritual essence dispersed across the universe. Right now, Strange is in a meditative trance, hoping to track down the part of the essence that knows about Apocalypse. But like I told him, we don't have time to wait."

Judging from the set of his jaw, Cyclops wasn't convinced. "So we're going to do - what? Throw Apocalypse back in jail?"

"We're not going to let him out in the first place," Cable countered. "The goal here is to destroy the key. The Ancient One sealed the doors with a mixture of science and magic that Strange can't duplicate, but it was his 'expert' opinion that even one door could contain Apocalypse until the mountain crumbled to dust."

"And what if he _does_ get out?" Jean demanded.

Cable pulled a section of his gun out and held it up to the light. "Then I'll destroy him."

"Right," Gambit drawled. "How you destroy somethin' that's practic'lly immortal?"

The mercenary didn't blink. "The same way you destroy everything else."

At that, Logan nodded in grudging approval. "_Now_ yer startin' to make sense."

Privately, Storm hoped it would not come to that, but she had the uneasy feeling it would.

The cockpit fell into a silence broken only by the hum of the engines and the soft clicks and scrapes of Cable cleaning his gun. It was no surprise to her when she felt herself sliding into sleep; headache or not, she'd been through a draining experience. With her teammates there, she was safe enough in taking a brief nap. _And we will need to be fully alert when we face Mesmero again_, she thought, then let the sleep take her.

---

When Storm opened her eyes again, the midday sun had faded into a black, moonless night. Bypassing time zones was one aspect of supersonic flight she would never get used to: by moving from Illinois to Tibet, they had crossed the International Date Line and were effectively jumping into the future. It was disorienting, and not a little confusing to figure out.

She stretched against the harness, feeling the stiffness in her muscles give way. The cockpit was subdued, although now she heard Professor Xavier carrying on a conversation with someone over the radio, probably Beast.

Cyclops was not in the pilot's chair; it took Storm a moment to realize that he was sitting behind her, directly across the aisle from Jean. The Blackbird was running on autopilot.

"-did well," Cyclops was saying softly.

Just as quietly, Jean said, "I panicked."

"But you pulled it together when we needed you."

The conversation went on, but, ashamed of her eavesdropping, she undid the harness and stood, walking towards the front of the cockpit.

Gambit was asleep; good thieves thought alike. Her mouth twitched at the idea. Storm, a mentor, teacher and respected X-Man, was a thief at heart. It would have been funny had it not been so true.

Rogue was staring blankly at the metal hull next to her. She looked a thousand miles away, and Ororo wondered briefly what the girl was thinking. Stolen memories of Apocalypse - or a subject closer to home and heart?

Cable had finished cleaning his gun and was sitting motionless. Wolverine was stationed across from him, equally still but focused on the two strangers in their midst. She stepped past them and took the empty pilot's seat. Below them, the Himalayas were swathed in a patchy field of clouds that glowed an ethereal white against the night sky. It was a beautiful sight. So odd, to think that below that tranquility was a monster of ageless evil.

"Ororo, I'm glad you're awake," the professor said, all business. "Beast and I have been discussing Cable's information, and we could use a third opinion."

"On one level, the information would appear to be accurate," Beast said. His voice had an electronic warble to it, caused by the scrambling device embedded in the radio's circuitry. "The date of approximately 200 BC would correspond to the beginning of the Han dynasty in China, which agrees with my initial dating of the stolen rings. Cerebro confirms that the mountain which you're currently approaching is indeed held to be sacred by local lore. And, Aztec religious codices explicitly state that the world will be devoured by celestial monsters, thus ending the fifth age of man. The Aztec civilization, although appearing much later than 200 BC, inherited much of their mythology from their Mesoamerican predecessors - including the Olmec." Hank paused and took a deep breath before continuing. "Taken individually, each piece of information is convincing. However..."

"The sum of their parts is not so credible," the professor finished. "At least, not to you."

"Exactly. I'd believe him more if he was dragging you out there to capture a Yeti."

Storm considered her reply carefully before saying, "I've seen and experienced things which lead me to accept Cable's story as true."

"Oh? Such as?"

She could picture Beast tilting his head, curiosity written plainly across his blue, fanged face, and because she knew the inquiry held no malice, she explained, "A creature who called himself the Shadow King. Men and women who have lived for centuries without aging. A hungan who captured my soul. If Apocalypse is a mutant, as Cable claims he is, then it's not impossible that he exists."

The professor nodded. "Well said."

Beast sighed. "That's three to one, and this _is_ a democracy... I know I can't stop you, but I would appreciate it if you'd let me watch. After all, even if 'Apocalypse' is nothing but a heap of dusty bones, the archeological value of such a find would be tremendous."

Storm smiled; for all of his boisterous athleticism and humor, Hank was a scientist to the core.

"Of course," the professor said. "Storm, I believe we have a few headsets with video and audio feeds - they're in the aft compartment."

"Yes. I'll get one," she said, rising.

"Make sure it's got NV," Beast added. "I hear it's dark in Tibet right now."

"And tell Scott to return, please. We're almost over the mountain, and I don't think we've tested him on night landings with non-horizontal surfaces."

Storm nodded and walked back. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Cable giving her a glance as she went past. Interesting. Gambit was awake and shuffling through a deck of cards with one eye fixed on Rogue, who was - a bit too pointedly - not looking in his direction.

Cyclops and Jean were still talking, but broke off when Storm stopped between them. "Cyclops, we're getting ready to land."

Scott looked at her blankly for a moment before jumping to his feet. "Oh. Uh, right."

She put a reassuring hand on Jean's shoulder, then opened the door to the aft compartment. They didn't use it often as passenger space, simply because they didn't need to, and thus it held the majority of their portable equipment. She and Logan had done inventory only a few days before, and she knew the four headsets were stored in a drawer near the floor. She knelt and opened the drawer, removing a headset at random.

Beast had mentioned night vision; she thought it would be a good idea for the students to have NV goggles, just in case. The NV equipment was stored next to the headsets, and she pulled three goggles out along with the lens for the video feed. Cyclops did not need NV.

The engines changed pitch abruptly, sending a shudder through the frame of the jet. They were descending.

Storm made her way back into the cockpit and handed out the NV goggles as well as some advice. "Remember, the air at this altitude is much thinner than what you've trained in. Your reactions will be slower, and you'll tire more quickly. Be sure to compensate for that," she finished as the plane dropped none-too-gently onto the side of the mountain. There was a noticeable tilt to the floor, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been. Scott had found a good landing site.

The students unfastened their harnesses and joined Storm, Wolverine, and Cable at the hatch.

The professor, who hadn't moved, cleared his throat. "I will not be with you, but I will be monitoring you telepathically. Storm will also be providing video and audio to Beast."

The students nodded.

"I know you'll do well," the professor added.

Wolverine opened the hatch and jumped down before the stairs finished descending. "Watch your step," he called back. "We're about three feet away from a long fall."

Cable went next, followed by the four students. Storm took her time adjusting the headset's fit so that the camera was level with her eyes. She turned it on and looked around the cabin. "How's this?"

"Perfect," Beast's voice buzzed in her ear.

"Good." She nodded at the professor and stepped out into the Tibetan night. The air was cold and thin, as she'd warned the students, and it took some concentration before the wind responded to her commands. In a fight, that could be dangerous.

Snow-capped mountains towered in all directions, and the stars arched overhead in a crystalline vault. She breathed deep. This was not Africa, but her soul responded to it with the same sense of awe. Truly, the Bright Lady's power filled this landscape.

Beast whistled. "You know, I've always wanted to see the Himalayas in person."

"They _are_ beautiful. I wish this visit was under better circumstances." The others had already walked upwards along a barely-discernable trail that snaked back and forth across the mountainside before becoming a narrow cliff of a path. She hurried to join them, using a gust of wind to help her. Not for the first time, she regretted the high-heeled boots of her uniform. They made climbing the rocky slope more difficult than it would have been in flats.

Wolverine had taken point, closely followed by Cable. Cyclops was leading the students; she fell into place between the two adults - the better to prevent bloodshed. "Where are we going?"

Without looking at her, Cable said, "Amarnath Cave. The resting place of the immortal one."

"Sacred to Shiva, the god of creation and destruction," Beast said. "If Apocalypse is the powerful force that Cable claims, then stories of his deeds might have been mixed - confused - with those of the Destroyer."

"I thought we were chasing Yetis," Storm said, smiling. Beast chuckled.

"Quiet," Cable hissed. "We're approaching the cave."

And indeed they were. Ahead of them, the trail terminated in a small platform. Wolverine slowed and extended his claws. Cable already had one of his guns in his hand and edged past Storm. The two men inched forward, pressed close to the mountainside, then burst into the cave's entrance with professional grace, guns and claws at the ready.

"Clear," Cable said after a moment. Storm noticed that he did not return his gun to its holster.

She followed the two men into the cave, aware of the students behind her, and also aware of the dark fingers that began to tug at her mind the moment she stepped over the threshold. The inky black space was vast; she could feel it by the air. It was even colder here than it was on the exposed rock face, but this was an unnatural cold.

_Be careful_, the professor warned telepathically. _Do not let Apocalypse gain control of your mind_.

"Into the lion's den," she heard Gambit mutter. Someone immediately hushed him.

"Storm," Beast said. "If what I'm seeing is any indication, I think you need to turn on a light."

"Lights?" she asked, realizing a deficiency in their planning. They hadn't brought any kind of lighting, just the night vision.

"I've got one. If you're wearing it, take your NV off." Cable flicked a switch on his gun and a surprisingly bright light flooded the cave.

"Whoa," one of the students said. The word echoed around them.

Storm agreed. The cave was relatively narrow, with a high roof that disappeared into the mountain. Columns, carved out of the same rock that formed the mountain, lined both sides of the cave and created an avenue that led to a towering door directly in front of them. The avenue was lined with artifacts and stelae. The door itself was covered with hieroglyphs and dominated by a large, empty circle and its surrounding picture.

Beast said, "Fascinating. Could I see that stelae to your left?"

Storm obediently walked over to it and knelt in front of a panel engraved with ideograms.

"Aha - now don't move," Beast said.

While she waited for him to interpret the writings, Storm observed the rest of the cave. She wasn't an expert in archeology, but she knew enough to identify some of the artifacts. An impressive array of cultures and civilizations were represented in this space.

The students stayed near the entrance, but Cable, after planting flares at the bases of the columns and turning off his gun's light, walked right up to the door and put a hand on the center picture. Wolverine was roaming the perimeter of the cave, sniffing and looking for danger.

After several long moments, Beast said, "Hmm... My Chinese is a little rusty, but I believe this is a warning against opening the prison. Stands to reason, I suppose... What about the door?"

She rose and joined Cable at the door. Up close, it radiated cold - a deep chill that threatened to freeze the very marrow in her bones.

The dark fingers clamped down suddenly, painfully, and she staggered sideways under their force. Cable grabbed her arm, holding her upright, and though her eyes were mostly shut against the agony, she saw his own eyes flare with a brief, golden energy.

Like a door slamming shut, the dark fingers vanished from her mind. Cable released her arm; she rubbed it absently, giving him a curious stare. He turned away from her and walked down the avenue.

"Ororo, are you all right?" Beast asked, sounding anxious.

"Yes," she said, although she wasn't entirely certain. "What do you know about this picture on the door?"

The picture was a bas-relief carving, with no coloration. The empty circle, about five inches in diameter, was recessed a bit and was probably the keyhole for the door. It seemed to perch on a low-slung boat, with two kneeling, winged women on either side. Their wings, which extended from their arms, touched the circle at its top and bottom. Four hieroglyphs had been carved beneath the boat: a triangle-within-a-triangle, an ankh, a serpent, and one she couldn't identify.

"Well, Cerebro is telling me that this is a solar bark, or boat, carrying a solar disk. The sky deities or seraphim kneeling on either side of the circle are typical depictions; their wings anchor the solar disk in eternity. And the hieroglyphs underneath the boat translate into 'bestowed with eternal life.' All in all, a fascinating example of-"

"Storm," Wolverine called, breaking her concentration. "Tell Beast his art lesson can wait."

She lifted herself into the air and flew to the entrance, where the others had gathered. "What is it?"

Wolverine pointed at a line of black shapes making their way up the mountain. "Looks like Mesmero stopped in Japan on his way over here."

"Hand ninjas," Gambit said, jumping into the conversation. "Assassins use 'em for target practice."

Storm blinked and squinted; if they hadn't been pointed out to her, she might not have noticed them. She knew the name, and their reputation; Yukio, one the few childhood friends she still kept in contact with, had told her horror stories about the ninjas. And despite Yukio's tendency to exaggerate, Ororo thought she was telling the truth.

"Don't let Gumbo fool you - the Hand are some of the nastiest in the business. They like to overwhelm with sheer numbers." Logan didn't sound particularly displeased at that information.

"Like cockroaches. You see one, best reckon there's a hundred more hidin' somewhere." He draped an arm around Rogue's shoulder. "Don' worry, chere, I keep you safe."

Rogue jerked away from him and pointed a threatening finger in his face. "Call me that again and I'll rip out your tongue, you Cajun creep."

Cyclops pushed them apart, saying firmly, "That's enough, both of you. If we're going to beat these guys, we need to fight as a _team_. Got it?"

"Got it," Rogue mumbled.

"Wish is my command, fearless leader," Gambit said, smirking. Storm resolved to have a small talk with the boy about the attitude - and the behavior - expected from an X-Man.

"Okay. Wolverine, what are the chances that the Hand are working for Mesmero voluntarily?" Cyclops asked.

Logan shook his head. "Slim to none. The Hand don't hire out, not even to the Yakuza."

"So what are the chances that they're hypnotized?"

Before Wolverine could answer - before anyone could answer - a dozen shuriken sliced into the rock floor, narrowly missing their feet. An endless stream of Hand ninjas followed, discarding their black cloaks in graceful swirls to reveal crimson clothes beneath.

They swarmed the entrance en masse, pushing the X-Men back despite Cyclops' optic blasts, Jean's telekinesis, and the gale-force winds Storm was managing to pull out of the oxygen-poor air. _Wolverine and Yukio were right_, she thought, _and so was Gambit_. Cockroaches, indeed.

Mesmero appeared in the entrance, along with still more Hand ninjas. Storm did a quick estimate; there were over fifty of the ninjas in the cave now. Mesmero shouted, "Stop them! Apocalypse must be freed!"

"Better than average," Cable said, answering the earlier question with wry understatement.

Storm dodged two ninjas and pushed herself upwards, into the relatively free airspace above the fight. A cave was bad enough, but add grasping crowds and her claustrophobia would not be long in coming. Lacking opponents for the moment, she scanned the chaos below, looking for a teammate in need of help.

Rogue was cornered by eight or nine ninjas, but she was fending off their attacks and getting a few hits of her own in. True to his word, Gambit was staying close to her, and Storm decided that the girl had the only guardian angel she needed.

Cable was dispatching ninjas without difficulty, although he had restrained from using his any of his weapons. He would probably not appreciate any assistance.

Cyclops and Jean were fighting side-by-side in the middle of the avenue, with Jean shielding and Scott attacking. It was their favorite method, Storm knew, and using it, they could hold out for nearly an hour under the Danger Room's toughest settings. The ninjas weren't going to be a problem for them.

Wolverine, however, was having some trouble.

The ninjas were concentrating their efforts on him, evidently knowing that he was the most dangerous of the X-Men, and he was all but buried beneath a tight cluster of nearly thirty red-garbed bodies. She dropped lower, stretched her hands out, gritted her teeth, and sent a small hurricane raging in their direction. The ninjas made an attempt to hang on, but it was useless; they went flying into the walls of the cave as though they were nothing more than matchsticks.

Wolverine knocked the last few out - she was glad to see that he wasn't using his claws - and gave her a mock salute. "Thanks, Ororo."

"You're welcome," she said, breathing slightly harder than usual.

He jerked his head toward the entrance, an expression of mixed exasperation and amusement crossing his face. "Oh, no..."

She looked in the same direction. "What is it _now_?"

And she saw that it was a foolish question, because Gambit had abandoned Rogue to the ninjas and was fighting his way towards Mesmero. Storm and Wolverine started heading that way as well, Storm picking off assailants with small lightning bolts as she went.

"Kid's persistent, I'll give him that," Wolverine said, punching a ninja without even looking.

"The Guild takes revenge seriously," she said. Very seriously.

Gambit broke free of a ninja's grasp and used his bo to vault over another, landing squarely in front of Mesmero. Without any further ado, he tackled the older mutant.

A ninja grabbed Storm from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. She struggled, but the man's grasp only tightened. This was the most surreal fight she had ever experienced - ninjas who moved silently and who did not speak even when they were injured, the orange light of the flares lighting the cave with Halloween colors, and everywhere the feel of something ancient and decayed and evil.

"You are a fool just like your brother!" Mesmero shouted, kicking Gambit away. Gambit landed lightly on his feet a good three yards away.

"Yeah, and you know what else, _cochon_? Remy's a thief like him, too!" With a triumphant flourish, he raised his hand to reveal a gold circle roughly five inches in diameter.

Mesmero's eyes widened in shock, then fury. "THE KEY!"

Storm filled the air around her with electrostatic energy, the prelude to a lightning strike, and the man's arms loosened slightly. She took advantage of the opportunity and tore away from him, taking to the air again.

"What, this?" Gambit was saying, flipping the key like an oversized coin. "I think it make a nice coaster for Tantie's coffee table, oui?"

Mesmero fairly bristled with rage. "I think your lifeless body will be the first offering to the dread lord."

In the space of a half-second, every ninja in the cave stopped fighting... and converged on Gambit.

_It's the key they want_, the professor said urgently. _Keep it from them while I try to take down Mesmero_.

The thief looked around wildly, then glanced upwards. "Stormy, CATCH!"

The golden disk seemed to hang in the air in front of her for a moment, long enough for her to clearly see the design engraved on the front of it: stylized Egyptian art of a man towering over his defeated enemies, clutching their hair in one fist and a flail in the other, upraised hand. Then her fingers closed around it and time snapped back into alignment. The ninjas immediately shifted their attention to her. None of the Hand could fly, but they all carried projectiles, if the rain of shuriken was any indication.

She dodged and twisted desperately, pushing herself higher into the cave's airspace while pushing the wicked metal blades down. A few made it past her winds and sliced deeply into her hand - the one that held the key.

The child-thief Ororo would have held on regardless, but Storm was out of practice. She cried out in pain. The key fell.

"I got it!" Jean called, stopping the key's descent with her telekinesis. Before Storm could swoop down and retrieve it - better her life endangered than the students' - a ninja kicked Jean in the back of her head. She crumpled, Cyclops blasted the ninja, the key fell again, and this time, no one stopped it.

The disk clattered to the rock floor of the cave some distance away from the main action, and there was a general scramble as both parties tried to get it. One of the Hand made it there first. The ninja snatched up the key and started for the door, but Rogue knocked it out of his hands and into hers with a well-placed shoulder to his midsection. Another ninja grabbed the key from her almost immediately, slamming her into a column in the process. She did not get up.

Gambit and Wolverine went after the ninja with the key. Cyclops was kneeling next to a dazed Jean, using his optic blasts to clear a path for two of his teammates while keeping another safe. Good leadership, but that left one X-Man alone.

Storm dropped to the ground beside Rogue and checked the injured student carefully, while tearing a strip of her cape and making a bandage for her bleeding hand. The three gashes were deep, with clean, almost surgical edges. The pain was a fiery throb; she knotted the bandage and dismissed it. Rogue's condition was more important.

"She might have a concussion," Beast buzzed in Storm's ear, startling her. In the confusion, she had forgotten the headset. She had also forgotten Cable, and now she looked around quickly. He was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Mesmero. That did not bode well. "I'd get her to the Blackbird ASAP."

"I can't leave them now," Storm said, but she knew that he was correct; Rogue needed medical attention. She gently lifted the girl in her arms, cradling her like a small child, and gave one last glance at the melee before heading for the entrance. As they reached the last set of columns, Rogue moaned slightly and stirred, blinking her way to consciousness.

Storm immediately set her on her feet. Rogue shook her head, winced, and swayed a little, but stayed upright. "I hate ninjas," she said, then winced again.

"Are you all right, Rogue?"

Rogue leaned against a column and waved her off. "Fine. Go."

Storm turned around and prepared to return to the fight. Wolverine had the disk now, holding his ground directly in front of the door, and most of the Hand were lying on the floor or were simply gone. Perhaps, under the strain of the professor's psychic attack, Mesmero had been unable maintain such tight control of the ninjas and they had abandoned an unwanted fight. Yukio had claimed that the Hand were mystics, well trained in psychic arts; it must have been difficult for Mesmero to gain control of them to begin with.

For the first time since the fight had begun, Storm felt a surge of hope. They would win this one yet.

A hail of laser fire burst from the shadows to Wolverine's left, catching him in the ribs and chest. He stumbled, clutching the wounds. One of the ninjas leapt over him, neatly snagging the key in the same graceful move.

Mesmero emerged from the shadows, tossed the laser rifle aside, and took the key from the Hand ninja. Wasting no time, he shoved it into the empty circle cut into the final remaining door.

"NO!" someone shouted.

Mesmero began to laugh, a deep, frightening sound of anticipation.

Blue-white light exploded from the circle, overtaking the dying orange flares and filling the entire cave. Storm raised her hand to shield her eyes as the light spread over the door's hieroglyphs, illuminating them one-by-one until the door was a maze of glowing lines and curves. And then the door simply disappeared.

A wave of blue-white light washed over her, bringing with it heat and the distinctive burnt smell of ozone. There was a rushing pressure in her ears, and a dusty wind scouring her skin like the khamsin at its strongest, and every instinct she possessed told her to flee from the abomination of a creature that was coming.

A massive dark shape appeared in the doorway, blocking the light and throwing the X-Men into shadow. All hate and evil, as Rogue had said, and power too - such power that it made her, the Windrider, stare open-mouthed.

This was En Sabah Nur. This was Apocalypse.

"Oh my stars," Beast exclaimed, the words blurred with a strange static.

She barely heard him, because Ororo Munroe was too busy doing something that she had not done in years, not since she was a ragged thief in Cairo. Not since she a was child wandering the Serengeti.

She was praying.

"Goddess save us," she whispered, and then the world exploded around her in a blinding fireball.


	9. Interlude: The Golden Room

Note: The ancient Egyptians' Book of Going Forth by Day is what we call the Book of the Dead. We're morbid.

* * *

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE 

To erase a name was to erase the person who bore it, and the ancient Egyptians had been thorough. They wiped the name of En Sabah Nur from their history: chiseled it from monuments, scoured it from painted walls, struck it from papyrus scrolls... anything to rid the Two Lands of the slightest memory of their former god-king.

But even the Egyptians were afraid to touch his tomb.

He had ordered its construction scarcely two weeks into his reign - not remarkable in a culture preoccupied with the afterlife. What made the craftsmen and laborers curious, though, was the lack of necessities. There were to be no carvings, no paintings, no ceremonial offerings in the burial chambers, no copy of the sacred Book of Going Forth by Day. En Sabah Nur had even, bafflingly, decreed that he was not to be mummified.

_Fine_, the priests had declared - not in his hearing, of course. _Let the heretic rot in his blank tomb_. His soul would have been devoured anyway, once judged against the purity of the feather of Ma'at.

The complex itself was simple, built of stone like any other temple, and set into the shelter of a cliff. No one had dared to cross its threshold since the last workers had gladly left its shadows; once its builder had been deposed, the priests had conducted the ritual curses safely outside the tomb. Their job finished, they left, and no one spoke the name of The First One any more.

As the years passed, and En Sabah Nur did not return, the terror he had inspired faded to a few whispered legends. One of these was collected by the Greek historian Herodotus, who labeled it as a story of Apophis, the serpentine enemy of Amun-Re, or perhaps Seth, the powerful desert- god. The sole copy of that particular story, which hinted at a tomb in the high desert, was stored in the magnificent Library of Alexandria. It did not survive the library's burning in the first century BC.

And so the tomb remained undisturbed in its remote corner of Upper Egypt for thousands of years. Even after the ancients had been sealed in tombs of their own and the fear had likewise died, even after the old religion had been supplanted with new beliefs, En Sabah Nur's last monument received no visitors. Grave robbers did not go there, for there was nothing to steal. Archaeologists did not excavate it, because no one remembered that it existed; after all, there was no record, anywhere, of the pharaoh who had ordered it built.

Deep within the womb of desert rock, his sarcophagus lay empty, his tomb's twisting passages unused and full of dust.

That solitude, however, was about to end.

END INTERLUDE


	10. To Pieces, part 1

He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.  
- Revelation 2:27

* * *

Wolverine hurt right down to the core of his metal-laced bones. Getting thrown twenty feet by a blast wave and slammed into a solid rock wall tended to do that to a person. Yeah, he was having a real banner day - knocked out by a punk kid, beat up by ninjas, shot by a sideshow reject, and now this. Apocalypse's sudden disappearance, along with that of Mesmero and the Hand, only made things worse. At the moment, Wolverine was definitely in the mood to slug it out with some half-dead god and his flunkies - the more the merrier. 

He groaned and pushed himself off the cave floor, stretching as he stood. The motion tugged at the burnt skin and muscles on his side and back and made him even more inclined to gut someone than usual. He hated burns; they took too long to heal, and stung like crazy while they were. But there was also the little matter of _why_ he'd wound up across the cave, burnt and bruised.

He didn't know whether it had been a bomb or a grenade - it didn't smell like either - but he knew who had detonated it, and now he popped his claws with a low growl.

Cable.

The mercenary was standing at the back of the cave, lighting a flare. Storm was hovering overhead of Cable and didn't look too happy. The kids were scattered around - Cyke and Jean in the middle of the avenue, where Jean had shielded them from the blast, and Rogue and Gambit near the entrance - and the protective side of him made Logan glad to see they weren't seriously injured. In fact, it looked like the Cajun had pulled Rogue to safety, sheltering her with his own body. That was probably more for his benefit than hers, Logan thought, and had his suspicions borne out when the kid coughed and said, "If this is death, it's not so bad, huh, chere?"

"Speak for yourself," she said, coughing, and gave him a sharp elbow in the stomach before climbing to her feet unaided. Wolverine almost felt sorry for the kid; he'd do himself in, hanging around their resident tough girl.

"Wolverine, are you all right?" Cyclops asked as he approached them.

He pushed past the younger mutant without saying anything, focused now on the mercenary. Cable looked in his direction as he approached, but moved to defend himself too late. Wolverine knocked the gun out of his hand and tripped the guy in the same movement, then pinned him on the floor with one set of claws at his throat.

"You! You set off that explosion. You planned it all along. Tell me why," he growled, pressing his claws closer - not hard enough to break the skin, but he was itching for an excuse. "And I'd better like the answer."

"I had to." Cable's eyes flared gold, and Wolverine felt something grab him from behind - a small distraction, but Cable made it count. He punched Logan in the throat, where his adamantium skeleton didn't do jack for protection. And Wolverine saw red.

_Don't lose it in front of the kids_, part of his mind warned, but the rest of him told that part to go to hell.

Cable had managed to get to his feet. Wolverine lunged at him with claws spread and ready to do damage. He slashed at the other man's torso, trying to literally rip his heart out; Cable dodged the blow. The claws bit into the silver metal of his arm instead, sending sparks flying and all but severing it.

"Logan, stop!" Storm exclaimed, coming between them with unborn lightning crackling around her and putting a forcibly restraining hand on his shoulder. That was a mistake, because it was her bandaged hand and it was reeking blood.

He pushed her away before the smell got to him and took a few steps back, trying to bring himself under control again. _Save it_, he told himself. _Save it for the next rematch with Creed_. The thought made him calmer, although he had no idea why. And the expressions on the kids' faces - half fear, half concern - made him feel slightly guilty. They had it hard enough without worrying about their own teacher.

Cable was crouching now, one hand on his injured arm and that gold glow around his eyes. It was the arm that caught Logan's attention: it twisted and flowed in a way that metal was not supposed to move.

It caught the kids' attention, too. Cyclops asked, cautiously, "Your arm... is alive?"

"No," Cable said, grimacing as the arm warped back into its proper shape. "It's infected."

That sounded doubtful to Wolverine. "_Infected_? With what?"

"A techno-organic virus. It's designed to convert flesh into a living machine." He gave Wolverine a piercing glare which Logan returned in kind. "I can keep it under control when people aren't trying to separate my arm from my shoulder."

Jean stepped closer. "And your eye -?"

"Yeah." The surface of the arm seemed to ripple once, then returned to normal. Cable stood and looked at the rubble that had filled the back of the cave. "Did anyone see him teleport?"

"I did," Rogue said, holding up a hand like she was in class. "Took Mesmero and those stupid ninjas with him."

Gambit added, "Said somethin' 'bout a golden room 'fore he left."

Storm pressed a hand to the earpiece of her headset, nodded, and said, "Beast says that the term 'golden room' refers to a pharaoh's burial chamber - gold is a symbol of eternity."

Cable scowled. "He's gone back to Egypt."

"And how do you know that?" Wolverine demanded.

"I know it, old man. Leave it at that."

Wolverine curled his lip in an unconscious sneer, but managed to suppress his urge to take the mercenary down a peg or two. "Fine. But we're not goin' anywhere until you explain why we got front-row seats to that little explosion."

"I'm not playing this game again. Apocalypse is regenerating and you're just wasting time," Cable snarled, and started to shove past the group.

Cyclops stepped into his path, red visor flashing. "We're not giving you a choice."

Cable was nearly a head taller than Cyclops, and twice as broad across the shoulders, but Cyke stared him down without the smallest flicker of concern. Logan approved. You didn't always get to be the bigger opponent in a fight, but fearlessness and persistence would take you a long way.

Cable leaned forward. "Get out of my way."

Cyke put a hand to his visor. "No."

Before the fireworks could start, Jean said, voice strained, "Look, I don't care if you guys have another shoving match, but could we please take it outside _before_ the cave falls on our heads?"

He quickly looked up at the high, natural vault of the cave, noticing for the first time that fault lines were crisscrossing the rock. Several small sections had already crumbled and separated from the ceiling, but they hadn't fallen to the floor. Jean was holding it all up with her telekinesis, a pretty impressive feat for a girl who used to have trouble lifting her own weight. "Good point."

Even in the cold night, Jean was sweating, and her hands were pressed to her temples in the universal gesture of a psi concentrating to their breaking point. When she added, "And - ah - we should hurry," that was all the incentive the team needed.

Storm led the way, soaring out into the night sky with an air of escape that only a claustrophobic could appreciate. Gambit and Rogue were next.

"After you," Wolverine said, giving Cable a decidedly unfriendly smile. Cable glared at him and left the cave. Logan followed, paying close attention the two guns strapped to Cable's back; there was a scent coming off of the weapons which he couldn't identify. It wasn't the heavy chemical smell of gunpowder, that was sure, and it wasn't quite the fried ozone of laser. This guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and it was seriously starting to annoy him.

On the narrow cliff trail, he stopped and looked back at the cave's entrance. Jean walked out slowly with Cyke hovering at her side. As soon as they'd cleared the platform, she lifted her hands from her temples.

He heard a series of sharp cracks, each magnified and echoed by the space inside the cave, and then the cracks merged into one massive, booming sound that shook the mountain. The collapse rumbled through his bones at the same time a billowing cloud of dust and stone debris exploded out of the entrance.

Storm, flying beside the trail, raised her hands and the cloud immediately dissipated rather than blowing back onto them. Having a weather-witch around came in handy more often than not.

The cave entrance was gone, blocked by several tons of fallen rock.

"So much for the Ancient One's prison," Rogue muttered.

They started down the mountainside, retracing their steps to the Blackbird. They hadn't heard anything from Xavier in a while - not since before the explosion - and though he hadn't been concerned earlier, Logan was now. Apocalypse could've gotten in a parting shot before he left, destroying the jet or blasting Charles into some far corner of the astral plane.

But the jet was right where they'd left it, undamaged. That didn't alleviate his concerns, not in the slightest. He pushed to the front of the group and charged up the stairway, half-expecting to see Xavier sitting with a Hand dagger buried in his chest.

There was no dagger, but Xavier was clearly the worse for the wear, leaning dangerously forward in his chair and holding his head in both hands. Wolverine grabbed the first-aid kit, just in case, and took up a position next to the X-Men's true leader, who was still conscious - always a good sign.

The kids bordered the jet with various exclamations of alarm. "Professor!"

"Is everyone all right?" Xavier asked, straightening and waving away the first-aid kit.

Wolverine did a quick visual check of the kids and Storm - Cable didn't count - and nodded.  
"Yeah. How about you?"

Xavier grimaced. "There was... a psychic backlash when Apocalypse emerged. I was caught in it. He is more powerful than anyone I've ever encountered - and there is something else, something about his very soul... I believe Rogue described him best - 'all hate and evil.' "

"He's gone to his tomb in Egypt," Cable told Xavier. "There he'll regenerate and we'll lose what little advantage we have right now."

"Oh yeah - that reminds me," Wolverine said, crossing his arms. "You were gonna tell us about that explosion."

Cable looked at him, then at the other X-Men, and tapped an empty hook on his belt. "Plasma grenade."

Wolverine snorted, unimpressed. "Science fiction, bub. Try again."

"That's the truth, old man."

Wolverine growled, bringing his arms up, but Xavier telepathically ordered him to stand down and took over the questioning with a calm, "_Why_ did you set off the explosion?"

Cable sighed, an expression of frustration that made Wolverine feel much better, in a vengeful way. "I knew that there was no way to prevent the door from being unlocked - with freedom that close, Apocalypse would've done anything to make sure he got out. He tried to take Storm's mind almost as soon as we got there."

Logan glanced at her and saw that she was looking at Cable with an odd expression, but she didn't say anything.

"I set off that explosion because it was the one chance we had," Cable went on, glaring at the others as if daring them to challenge him. "Think about it."

Logan had already thought about it, including the parts Cable had obviously left out, and the confirmation only made him feel more used. The sonofabitch had dragged them along as distractions, not help.

Cyke started and looked around at the other kids, who didn't have a clue, before turning back to Cable. "Of course - he was free. He wasn't expecting an attack."

"Exactly. He'd been waiting two thousand years for that moment. Planned to start conquering the world immediately. I used his arrogance against him."

"Which makes me wonder, bub, how you know so much about him," Wolverine said, narrowing his eyes. "After all, guy's been locked away for a long time."

Cable hesitated. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Wolverine uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. "Try me."

Cable hesitated again, this time with the space-cadet look Wolverine had come to recognize as telepathic communication. The mercenary was talking to Charles, probably. If he was talking to Jean then he was going to get a claw through his mercenary head. No one messed with the kids on Logan's watch.

"I'm from the future," Cable finally said.

"Jesus Christ," Wolverine swore, disgusted. He was supposed to keep his language clean around the kids, but he didn't care at the moment; this was too much. "You expect us to believe that garbage?"

Xavier held up a hand, signaling patience. "He's telling the truth."

Wolverine looked at him in total disbelief. "What, your spider-sense lettin' you know that?"

"I can understand your reluctance, Wolverine," Xavier said, with the brisk, businesslike tone he used when he was disciplining the kids, "but there is no doubt in my mind as to the veracity of Cable's claims."

Wolverine respected Xavier. There weren't a lot of people with the guts to actively make a dream into reality - and to keep fighting for that dream the further away it got. For that matter, he respected Xavier's dream, even if he did think that the professor's tactics were sometimes too soft.

And nine times out of ten, Xavier turned out to be right. But having his instincts questioned never failed to make Wolverine angry.

"All right," he snarled, pointing at Cable with one set of claws extended for emphasis. "Future Boy here can drag us to _another _unknown location to fight a creature who may or may not be too powerful for us to handle. Nothing wrong with that."

He stalked to the rear of the passenger cabin, where he leaned against the wall and stayed through takeoff. No one, not even the Cajun, was dumb enough to try to talk to him. Instead, the kids clustered around Cable, who was mapping out the location of Apocalypse's golden room.

Wolverine looked at the group absently, still too angry to concentrate - and then he blinked, seeing something for the first time. Cable was heavier, yeah, and older, but the lines of his skull were too similar... And the way he held himself, the attitude, the psionics...

Like a lot of things in life, it was obvious once you saw it.

"I'll be damned," Wolverine muttered, too low for anyone to hear. Cable _was_ from the future.

His bad mood was still there, but as he thought about the ramifications of Cable's existence - especially after the last few months of non-stop tension and teen angst - he had to chuckle. If they all made it through this alive, the next few years would be interesting. Interesting indeed...


	11. To Pieces, part 2

Note: I forgot to include my patented disclaimer haiku with chapter one, so on the theory of "better late than never," here it is: 

Evolution or  
Not, they all still belong to  
Marvel. No suing.

Also,"supraorbital tori" is the fancy-shmancy term for browridges. I took an anthropology class and now everyone's gonna pay for it:)

* * *

He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.  
- Revelation 2:27

* * *

Xavier had not been to Egypt in years, and the memories that he had of it were mixed. It was in Egypt that he had first encountered Storm - she had stolen his wallet in the middle of a busy Cairo street - and it was in Egypt that he had first encountered the Shadow King. 

This trip promised more bad memories.

He sighed and rubbed his eyes, tired from his intense study of the few seconds of video that Storm's headset had recorded before the blast. The image of Apocalypse, once run through Cerebro and "cleaned up," presented a terrifying picture. The mutant was huge by anyone's standards, with bulky blue armor only increasing his height and girth; his head, resting atop a massive, corded neck, seemed almost too small for the rest of his body. It was the face that had captured Xavier's attention: thick blue lips wrapped around Apocalypse's skull to his ears in a macabre rictus of a smile, with baleful red eyes all but buried in shadow under heavy supraorbital tori.

The face reminded him of nothing so much as the multi-ton Olmec stone heads, or perhaps the moai of Easter Island - and with that thought came a sudden jolt of realization as to _why _those cultures had created such objects in the first place. Appeasing an angry god, indeed.

"We're two minutes out," Scott announced. They had jumped time zones again, flying away from an advancing dawn, and now the world outside the jet was the deep blue-black of pre-midnight. Xavier, occupying the co-pilot's position for this jaunt, looked over at his student and the mutant standing behind him.

Yet another in a long list of complications.

"Descend here," Cable said, showing Cyclops a point on the Blackbird's on-board navigation display.

Xavier sighed again. He did believe the mercenary, having seen the telepathic evidence firsthand, but it was an uncomfortable burden; he didn't particularly enjoy concealing the truth from his students. However, having them find out now would be... upsetting.

"At the risk of repeating myself, this is fascinating," Beast said over the radio. "There's no record of En Sabah Nur anywhere, let alone his tomb, but the satellite photos I just, ah, borrowed from NASA are showing definite evidence of an ancient excavation."

Cable's mouth twitched in annoyance. "I told you."

"Yes, you did," Xavier said, adding telepathically, _You realize that you're not making any friends_.

_Who says I want to?_ Cable shot back, then severed the communication link with what Xavier was coming to recognize as a characteristically brutal thought.

He had his parents' tempers, and none of their care. Wonderful.

"Beginning descent," Cyclops said, voice neutral. He was obviously trying to ignore the mercenary - a more futile task than he could know.

The Blackbird came to rest on the flat, rock-strewn sands with its side to the narrow canyon that housed Apocalypse's tomb. Xavier reached out with his telepathy, running a superficial scan of the area; the malignant force was there, pulsing under the earth like a cancerous heart. Risking another backlash, he focused his powers on Apocalypse's mind for the briefest of seconds, then terminated the connection. The ancient mutant was indeed weakened from the explosion, but still powerful. Too powerful for his liking.

Xavier closed his eyes against the sharp pain of a blossoming headache. Attacking Mesmero and Apocalypse in a few hours' span had taxed him more than he liked to admit, and he was starting to feel the effects. As much as he hated the idea, whatever battle his X-Men were about to face, they were going to have to face it largely alone.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to accompany them - far from it. Staying on the sidelines during the fight in Tibet had been an exercise in frustration; now he would take his chances beside his students, where any good teacher would be.

He waited until the X-Men and Cable had departed the plane, then descended himself and joined the group as they trekked towards the canyon's opening.

Predictably, Scott was the first to call him on it. "Professor, are you sure you should be here?"

"I'll be fine, Cyclops." To forestall any further argument, he said, "Storm, fly ahead and check for possible traps."

She nodded and lifted upwards into the night with a gust of wind that sent the sand and gravel swirling. It was warmer here than it had been in Tibet, but not by much, and he wished for better protection than his professorial jacket provided. At least the students, in their more insulated uniforms, were comfortable.

His headache worsened for a moment, and he pressed his forehead in a vain attempt to relieve the pain. This was not a smart idea at all; he was going to be nearly useless. And yet, some small - _all right, be honest_ - large bit of ego wouldn't let him reconsider his decision. He was not going to let his students face this on their own. They had to succeed _now_. With the helicopter destroyed, there was no way for the others to come to their aid, save civilian transport. And that would simply take too long.

They paused at the mouth of the canyon, waiting for Storm's report. A soft rustling sound heralded her return, and Xavier looked up expectantly as she lowered herself to a point approximately five feet over their heads.

"The canyon is empty," she said, shaking her head. "If there is a trap, it's not outside."

"Traps. Plural. And they'll be inside." Cable drew one of the two large guns strapped to his back and held it at the ready. "Well?"

Xavier looked at his students - the most treasured parts of his life - and knew there was only one answer. "Let's go."

Storm flew ahead, while Cable and Wolverine took point. Cyclops and Jean followed closely behind the adult mutants, and Xavier fell in between his two oldest students. The sand on the floor of the canyon was layered slightly deeper than it had been on the plateau - not quite deep enough to cause problems for his chair, fortunately, and he had no trouble keeping up them.

The walls of the canyon soared overhead, seeming to arch inwards. The rock was not smoothly wind-cut as it was in the ancient stone city of Petra, instead being fragmented in much rougher chunks and layers. He was not a geologist, but he knew the signs of water action when he saw them. Storm would have to exercise caution here; any rainfall would cause a flash flood of dire proportions.

"We're here," Cable said, not bothering to whisper. "Here" was a triangular crevice splitting the cliff face. Dimly visible several yards inside the crevice was a blank stone face, unnaturally flat.

"So where's th' doorbell?" Gambit asked.

Cable gave him a dark glance, unimpressed by the humor. "Right here." He held up a palm-sized object that glinted a dull metallic in the moonlight. A small red light flashed intermittently in the center of the object, which was stamped with a series of black ideograms that Xavier didn't recognize.

"We should take a few steps back," Wolverine said, sniffing the air. An understatement. Xavier wondered briefly just how many explosive devices Cable had.

Cable set the device and retreated to join them some yards down the canyon. There was a muffled _boom_, a burst of smoke and sand from the crevice, and then a silence broken only by the barely-audible clinks of small rocks settling into their new places.

Cable and Wolverine immediately moved into the new entrance, the laser sight on Cable's gun sweeping through the cloud of smoke. "Clear," Wolverine called back. Storm, hovering above the entrance, gracefully dropped down and vanished into the smoke.

Xavier lead the children inside. It was a dark place, both physically and emotionally; he could feel the blackness of En Sabah Nur's soul everywhere. The corridor he was in opened into a vast space of such stygian shadow that it was almost palpable. The walls that he could see were blank - curious for an Egyptian tomb - and until Cable flicked on a light on his gun, the true dimensions of the place were unknowable.

"Impressive," Xavier said. His words echoed - and echoed and echoed. The ceiling was a full twenty feet above them, with the walls stretching away a dozen yards on either side. There were no decorations anywhere.

"Sure, it's big enough, but look at the location," Jean said with slightly forced levity, and for some reason that made Cyclops chuckle. Curious, Xavier lightly scanned their thoughts. Ah. A line from a movie.

Cable, examining the far wall, shifted his gun and called, "Over here."

Xavier rolled over to him. "Hidden door," the mercenary explained, tapping the wall with the business end of his gun.

"I got this one," Cyclops said, putting his hand to his visor's control dial.

The red beam of his optic blast slammed into the wall, collapsing it into the unseen room beyond, and Storm blew the dust away from them with a wave of her hands.

The new room was significantly smaller, and contained only one item of note: a square opening in the floor, perhaps two and a half feet wide. Cable knelt beside the hole, his scarred eye phosphorescing suddenly, and said, "It's a ten-foot drop, straight down, and there's a web of infrared beams on the way."

Storm raised her eyebrows. "Infrared?"

"Apocalypse was always ahead of his time," Cable said, standing again.

Xavier cleared his throat and gestured at the opening, trying not to let his feeling of defeat show. "Well. This is the end of the road for me, I'm afraid. I'll stay here and provide whatever assistance I can."

Cyclops nodded. "Okay. Rogue, you'll stay with the professor... Rogue?"

They all looked around the room, but it was Jean who asked, "Where'd she go?"

Wolverine growled. "I don't know - but wherever she went, the Cajun went with her."

Xavier put a hand to his head, searching for the wayward children, and found them some distance away, in pursuit of a familiar figure. Their timing left something to be admired, but he couldn't really fault initiative. "They have a mission of their own. Wolverine will stay in her place. The rest of you will proceed as planned."

_Storm will take care of the students. For that matter, you and I both know, I think, that Cable will not jeopordize them_, he told Logan directly, before he could protest.

Wolverine growled again, truly displeased at the arrangement, but didn't object - not verbally, at least. Telepathically, he started complaining almost immediately. Xavier tuned him out and refocused his attention on the others.

"Right," Cyclops said. "We won't let you down, Professor."

Xavier gave him smile of fatherly pride. "I know you won't."

Then he left his students to infiltrate the tomb proper, returning to the grandiose first chamber. There had to be a clue _somewhere_, some sort of mark or sign that they could use to their advantage. Surely the Egyptians, sticklers for legacies, had left a record of how they'd defeated En Sabah Nur and drove him from their kingdom.

"They're off safe. Jean's telekinesis deflected the infrared beams," Wolverine informed him a few moments later as the older mutant came across the room to stand beside him. "Whatcha lookin' to find, Chuck?"

"I'm not certain," he said. "Hopefully, something that will help us." He reached out to brush away an ancient layer of grime from the frustratingly blank wall - and a knife buried itself hilt-deep in the rock millimeters from his fingers.

Startled, Xavier turned around in his chair to see four Hand ninjas standing not two yards away. He was taken aback by their sudden appearance - telepathy usually left one with few surprises - but Wolverine flashed a predatory grin and popped his claws. "Oh, yeah. I was _hopin'_ to see you chumps again."

"Come now, Logan-san," one of the ninjas said in mildly accented English. Xavier pushed his way into the ninja's mind just long enough to glean that these four had a long history with Wolverine, and that they were being controlled directly by Apocalypse rather than Mesmero. He wasn't certain if that made them more dangerous or less. "You know you cannot defeat us. We have beaten you many times in the past."

The predatory grin widened. "Hundredth time's the charm, bub. Let's dance."


	12. Interlude: The Golden Room

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE

Six thousand years ago, long before the Two Lands were united by the king Narmer, a god fell from the sky and came to rest on the desert sands. This descent was witnessed only by a small nomadic tribe, who had no way of knowing that the god was not a god at all, but a time-traveler. When the god decreed himself to be the Great House - to be pharaoh - none of the tribes he conquered offered an objection.

He called himself Rama-Tut, although that was not his name, and he had flung himself into the past for one reason only: to find the child called En Sabah Nur and make him a living weapon. In this, Pharaoh Rama-Tut failed desperately.

En Sabah Nur was no one's slave.

Rama-Tut was sent screaming back to his proper time, and his would-be weapon took the red crown of Upper Egypt in his place. He also took the time-traveler's advanced technology - not the temporal displacement technology, which Rama-Tut had wisely kept on his person, but everything else that he could strip from his predecessor's palace rooms.

The weaponry intrigued him.

The regenerative devices were a revelation from the heavens themselves.

With such tools he need never worry about expending his power to the point of no return - need never worry about aging - need never worry about finding a successor of his own.

En Sabah Nur fashioned some of the technology into his own armor. The bulk of the equipment, however, he placed in his tomb.

His golden room held no gold. It held something infinitely more valuable: a true promise of immortality.

He was the first, and he would be the last. So had fate decreed.

And anyone seeking to disturb his healing rest would pay for it. Dearly.

END INTERLUDE


	13. Faithful, part 1

Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.  
- Revelation 2:10

* * *

Gambit wasn't afraid of heights, and it was a good thing because at the moment he was most of the way up an eighty-foot cliff with no climbing gear to help hold him to the rock. He glanced down at Rogue to see how she was doing, then returned his attention to not falling. Just because he wasn't afraid didn't mean he was stupid.

A flicker of purple at the top of the cliff - a slightly different shade than the black sky - had caught his attention as the X-Men had entered the tomb, and seeing as how he was less interested in getting pounded by Apocalypse than he was in getting even with Mesmero, he'd quietly abandoned the group. Why Rogue had decided to come with him was a mystery; he wanted to think it was because she liked him, but more probably it was because she'd had that pointless "team unity" thing programmed into her.

"This is the dumbest idea..." she said now, the words drifting up to him along with the distinctive scritch of boots on rock.

He tested a handhold before pulling himself up another few feet, and looked down at her again. "Relax, chere. Just think of it as a real 'xcitin' date."

She made a disgusted noise. "Oh, yeah, that'll be such a comfort when I fall and die. And for the last time, stop callin' me that! Sounds like the singer, and I hate her."

Remy allowed himself to smirk. She was going to be a lot of fun, she was, maybe more so than Belle. Not that he didn't miss Belle, and miss her badly - it was just hard to focus on those bittersweet memories when he had a firebrand like Rogue right there to keep him entertained.

"If that's what you want, Roguey," he said, hauling himself - finally - over the top of the cliff.

"Shut up," she snapped. "Just shut up. For five whole minutes. I dare you."

He knelt and extended his hand to her, giving her his most charming grin at the same time. "Never, chere."

She ignored his hand and pulled herself up. Now that was like Belle - independent to a fault and twice as stubborn. "You're a big fat jerk, you know that?" she told him, brushing off her gloved hands. "So where's Mesmero?"

He scanned the ground, looking for the traces of footsteps, and found an imprint a yard away, its raised edges shining pale in the starlight. There were more prints leading away from the cliff, into an area filled with boulders and towering rock outcrops; Remy wasn't a tracker by anyone's standards - though he could follow a money trail pretty good - but even he could see where Mesmero had gone. "Settin' him up a little ambush, I think. Stay close."

She nodded, looking around the place and shivering just a bit. He started walking. In a way, it was good that Rogue was the one who'd come with him. She'd been up close and personal with Mesmero already, and probably wouldn't let herself get hypnotized. As for himself, Mesmero had tried to sucker him once, in Paris, but you can't con a con man, and so Remy had escape with his free will intact. He thought it was because of one of his own abilities - something he couldn't really describe, except as a kind of aural hypnosis: all he had to do was talk the right way and people fell for it. He'd been trying not to do that with Rogue. Took all the fun out of life.

The sand gave way to barren rocks, and with it went the footprints. They were far from the cliff now, and well into the boulder field. Gambit stopped, uneasy and conflicted about what to do next. Every instinct he had was screaming trouble. Every instinct he had was also telling him to move it before Mesmero disappeared again.

In the end, it was Rogue who ended the dilemma. She pushed past him and yelled, "Get your ugly face out here, Mesmero! Or are you too scared to fight a couple of kids?"

"Remy was tryin' to sneak up on him?" he reminded her, rolling his eyes.

"I've got other teammates to help," she snapped, hands on hips and surveying the outcrops. "I don't feel like wastin' any more time than necessary on this loser."

Definitely the team-unity thing. He ignored the unexpectedly strong twinge of disappointment that brought him, and pulled out his bo-staff from its place in his coat, offering up a challenge of his own to the mindbender: "Ya, _cochon_, I got somet'in to settle wit' you!"

A low laugh snaked its way around the boulders and outcrops. Gambit couldn't pinpoint the direction of the sound, which didn't make him feel any better about the blown ambush. Maybe he should've done this solo after all.

The laughter trailed off, ending with a malevolent chuckle. "Be careful what you ask for, children..."

Silence descended on the desert for the space of a heartbeat. Gambit tensed, ready to move - and move he did, flinging himself to one side in a smooth tuck-and-roll as a hail of blue lasers sliced down from the rocks. Rogue jumped backwards with a surprised shout. "He's still got that stupid gun!"

"Ain't gonna do him no good," Gambit said, coming up from his roll with four cards in hand. Another burst of lasers gave him an idea of Mesmero's location - high up on a rock outcropping - and he flung the cards with every bit of accuracy he could manage. The cards cut a glowing swath through the night air and exploded against the rock, sending a shower of pebbles and dust raining back down on the young man who'd thrown them.

"You pathetic children!" Mesmero shouted somewhere, and Gambit looked around quickly, trying to figure out where the mindbender was now.

Behind him, Rogue cried out again, and he spun to see Mesmero standing over her with the rifle raised in his hands. She was kneeling on the ground, clutching the back of her head and obviously in agony, and Gambit suddenly remembered that she'd gotten a head injury once already tonight. Ouch.

"So much for havin' help," he said to himself, under his breath, and threw the better part of a deck at Mesmero. "Shame on ya - hittin' a girl - you got no manners at all!"

Mesmero dodged the cards, moving with surprising speed and agility, but Gambit had never intended to hit him with the cards anyway. While the older mutant was distracted, he closed the distance between them and knocked the rifle away with a flip of his bo, then leapt back, out of reach. "Evens th' field a little, no?"

"The field will never be even, genetrash, not between the superior and the weak, and the strong will always triumph. Your brother was unfit," Mesmero said, a dark smirk sliding across his face. "Watching him die was... amusing."

White-hot fury crackled through every cell of his body, and Remy could feel the energy flare from his eyes, warm against his skin in the cold of the night.

Mesmero laughed, teeth flashing white. "Yes, little boy, be angry. Try to avenge him."

Gambit finally found his voice, and, much calmer than he felt, told him, "You're going to die."

"One who serves Apocalypse can never die!" Mesmero shouted, throwing his arms wide in a gesture of exaltation.

"Lessee 'bout that," Gambit said, and charged the other mutant.

Mesmero was ready for him, of course, because a more telegraphed move there had never been, and the next minutes devolved into a blur of punches, kicks, and half-dodged blows. Remy was an accomplished fighter, skilled in hand-to-hand combat and not afraid to fight dirty, but Mesmero was being fueled by a creature of unthinkable power, and the rage burning within him eventually, inevitably, made Gambit miscalculate.

His bo went spinning, torn from his hand by a lucky shot on Mesmero's part. Like a fool, Remy turned slightly to see where it had gone, and before he could refocus his attention on his opponent, Mesmero landed a solid punch to his jaw.

Dazed, he staggered backward, shaking his head to clear it. This was not good, not good - he had to get this back under control. Mesmero advanced on him, the movement visible even with the stars dancing in front of his eyes, and Gambit lashed out with a high kick that caught the mindbender in the ribs.

It barely made Mesmero blink, but it cost Gambit his balance, and he fell heavily to the ground.

Mesmero smiled and bent to retrieve the fallen bo. Before his fingers finished closing around it, a figure slammed into him, knocking him against a boulder face-first.

Rogue. Okay, so there was something to that team-unity idea.

Gambit scrambled to his feet and felt for a card, frantically, as Mesmero backhanded Rogue across her face. She hit the dirt hard and groaned, but didn't get back up.

"Fool," Mesmero snarled at her, wiping a line of blood from his mouth. "You'll pay for this indignity!"

"Big talk from someone bleedin' all over the desert!" Gambit flipped a card in his face, forcing him to step away from Rogue, and followed it up with a good punch to his ugly tattooed face. Bone crunched, blood spurted, and Mesmero howled.

And before Gambit could press this advantage, Mesmero dove at him with eyes wide and wild, and he was just a fraction of a second too slow in blocking the attack, and the other mutant's hands clamped down around his neck, forcing him to the ground.

Mesmero was a lot stronger than he looked. Gambit got his own hands on Mesmero's chest and pushed as hard as he could, to no avail; the fingers around his neck tightened even further. Black spots began to dance at the edges of his vision.

"I have seen the future," Mesmero told him, red eyes blazing with a twisted inner fire, "and you are not in it."

"Great," Remy managed to get out, promptly cursing himself for wasting the breath. His blood was pounding in his ears, in his face, and he kicked at Mesmero with the desperate strength of a dying man. Nothing happened.

The spots coalesced into a single black curtain, blocking out everything but the triumphant sneer of the man he was supposed to be killing.

"Such will be the fate of all who dare stand in the way of the dread lord," Mesmero hissed. "You are but the first. Soon the entire world will feel the power of En Sabah Nur! There is no hope - there is no chance of salvation - you will all die at my master's hands!"

Gambit tried one more time to pry the mindbender's fingers from his throat, but it was no use. Now there was only a pinprick of dim light in the midst of the blackness, and even with his sluggish mind, he knew that he didn't have the strength to fight any more. He was going to die, and in this last moment before the blackness swallowed him forever, he wished he'd paid more attention at Mass. How did it go - "_Mon Dieu, je regrette_..."

His voice sounding strangely distant, Mesmero crowed, "Death to all who oppose the might of Apoc-"

There was a sudden meaty thunk! and the pressure on his neck vanished. Gambit immediately sucked down a lungful of air and shoved Mesmero's unconscious body off his chest, coughing all the while, and looked up to see how his deliverance had come about.

Standing above him, uniform torn and stained, face dirty, hair a mess, a grapefruit-sized rock in her hand, was Rogue. And at that moment, choking on precious oxygen, he thought she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful sight in the world.

He coughed some more and, voice hoarse, managed to say, "Thanks, chere."

She dropped the rock and dusted off her hands before hauling him to his feet. "I was just tryin' t'get one of you to shut up."

"Oh, I'm fine,_ comment ça va_?" he muttered, rubbing his neck gingerly.

She rolled her eyes, then poked at Mesmero's shoulder with the toe of her boot. "Okay, we got him. Now what?"

Instead of answering her, he reached inside his duster, removing a single card - another ace of spades, saved special for Mesmero - and with a thought, it began to fill with energy. It was too bad; he'd wanted the villain to be awake when he delivered the final blow. Ah well. _C'est la vie_ and all that - revenge was still revenge.

He could feel the card was nearly full, so he drew back his arm, preparing to throw it right into the black lines of Mesmero's face. Finally, after all the days and weeks of chasing, after all the promises and oaths, he was going to exact the retribution his brother's soul demanded, and then he was going home to stop the Assassins. With a flick of his wrist, the world would snap back to normal. It was right. It was tradition.

Eye for an eye, and Mesmero was past due.

Remy LeBeau gave the other mutant a last, hateful look. "Now it's time t'say goodbye, _cochon_..." he started, but in the split-second before he sent the card flying, Rogue stepped in front of him and effectively blocked the fallen mindbender with her body.

"Stop!" she said, holding up a hand. "Don't do this."

"Why not?" he asked - demanded - without lowering the card. "Why not?"

"Because X-Men don't kill," she said, simple and determined.

He wanted to laugh at the innocence, the blindness, the total unthinking confidence with which she'd said it. He wanted to knock her aside, get her the hell out of his way so he could finish what he'd started. And he wanted to kiss her for everything and for nothing.

What he actually did, though, was giver her a bitter smile. " 'Sokay, chere, I think my membership was temp'rary anyway."

"Then -" She closed the distance between them until she was less than a foot away, and put a hand on his arm. "Because two wrongs just make a bigger wrong," she said, searching his eyes. "And you know it."

He looked away, fighting down a surge of frustration. "I have to do this."

"No you don't. There's always another way." Her fingers, warm through her gloves, wrapped over his, and he knew that she was going to try to take the card away. Part of him was screaming _it's tradition, it's the way you have to do things, Henri must be avenged_, and another part of him was terrified that the soft, trusting look in Rogue's eyes would vanish forever is he killed Mesmero like he was honorbound to do. _Mon Dieu_, he thought wildly, _do I really have it that bad_?

"We can find that way, I know we can. Just don't do this." She tugged slightly on the card, and all of a sudden he felt himself give up, felt himself surrender a hundred generations of Guild tradition to a pretty girl with pleading eyes, and he knew he would never forgive himself for letting Henri and the Guild down in this moment.

Rogue tossed the card away. It exploded somewhere in the dark behind them without sending even a sprinkle of sand their way. Then she pulled him into a hug, wrapping her arms around him and letting all that warmth soak into his chilled, guilty soul. "Welcome to the team, Remy."

"_C'est bien_," he said after a moment, hugging her back and lying through his teeth. "_C'est bien_. You know how t'work the 'bird's radio?"


	14. Faithful, part 2

Note: I've broken from my format and switched POVs in mid-chapter; that doesn't really matter, of course, and there was really no other way to go about it, but I felt like a cheater for doing it and I wanted to confess. It's good for the soul,  
y'know. :)

* * *

Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.  
- Revelation 2:10

* * *

Cable had taken the lead almost immediately, inching his way through the pitch-black warren of rooms and corridors with the X-Men following at a cautious distance. The tomb complex was a maze, and navigating it was made no easier by the infrared capabilities of his techno-organic eye. He'd done this exactly once before - in a different monument, in a different time - and now he wished that he had Aliya beside him for this second attempt. 

Of course, the lack of her presence was, ultimately, the reason he was here.

His infrared registered a thin line running across the sand-covered floor and up one of the walls. There was a heat source somewhere behind it; an obvious trap, the sixth one they'd encountered so far. He stopped, hearing the hesitant footsteps of the X-Men stop behind him as well, and kicked a small rock onto the line.

A sequence of white-blue lasers burst out of the wall and upwards from the floor, creating a grid that instantly reduced the rock to mere steam and would have most definitely vaporized anything _else_ caught in it.

"Fry it," he told Storm, gesturing at the grid with his gun. A small lightning bolt jumped from her fingers to the wall, and the lasers abruptly shorted out with a metallic sizzle. He maneuvered another rock into place over the line, just be sure, then started moving forward again when nothing happened. They were passing rooms and branching tunnels with alarming frequency, and though he checked all of them briefly for potential traps, he wasn't detouring from the route he knew led to the lazarus chamber. There was a reason, after all, that his primary weapon had a heads-up display. Right now it was giving him the map he and the X-Men needed.

Even Cable had to - grudgingly - admit that Apocalypse was no fool. Faced with a small army of mutants, he'd fallen back on the tried-and-true strategy of "divide and conquer." Mesmero was leading two of the kids on a merry chase, while the Hand's top assassins were keeping two of the adults busy. That left only four of them to actually penetrate the lazarus chamber, and considering that it had taken an army of thousands to evict him from Egypt in the first place, four mutants would seem to be an easy victory.

But Apocalypse's plan hadn't been as successful as it might have, because all he'd done was get rid of the liabilities: Rogue was useless, Gambit unpredictable, Wolverine a good fighter but outmatched, and Professor Xavier a hostage situation waiting to happen.

Cable was going into battle with the three true powerhouses of the X-Men - a weather goddess, a boy who could punch a hole through a mountain, and a girl who would one day ravage solar systems with a single thought. Divided, yes. Conquered - not damn likely.

Keeping a low voice, Cyclops asked, "What are we going to do?"

Cable didn't even have to think about it. "We're going to kick down the door and blast Apocalypse to ashes."

"That's a little... violent," Jean said.

The familiar surge of hate rose in his chest, filling him with new strength and determination, and his good eye flashed gold. "He's earned it."

He felt, rather than saw, Storm frown at his back. She'd left the headset behind for this trip, and he was glad of that; it would be one less voice arguing against what he had to do. "This crusade against Apocalypse seems rather personal."

Personal? Before he'd made the time jump, he'd spent a sleepless night thinking about everything that lead to the decision. He'd thought about Mother Askani and her clan of warriors, about the nameless, faceless man and woman who had cared for him as a child, about the more than six billion people that Apocalypse had killed on his rise to global supremacy. Mostly, however, he'd thought about Aliya, and he'd thought about Tyler, and he'd thought about all the ways Apocalypse had attempted to ruin - if not end - his life because he was too great a threat to the tyrant's mad ambitions.

_When he's cured, you'll bring him back_? his father's voice asked now, echoing in the unborn past.

_No_, the Askani sister's voice answered. _If you embrace this path of destiny, he will be lost to you forever_.

And hard on the heels of that memory came another - that of his wife, calling to him across the battlefield. _Nathan!_

_Nathan!_

_**Nathan!**_

"Cable," Storm said, putting a hand on his shoulder and breaking his train of thought. It also startled him out of infrared; as he looked at her, her white hair and eyes seemed to glow faintly with some inner light. Storm was nothing like his late wife - and yet, for reasons he didn't want to consider, she was. Right now, her eyes held an expression he'd seen many times in Aliya's: concern.

He shrugged off her hand and the emotions of the past, and switched back to infrared. "It _is _personal."

"Why?" Cyclops asked. "What did - um, will - he do to you?"

Cable shook his head. Under less serious conditions, he might've been tempted to laugh. _Of all the people_, he thought to himself, and moved forward.

He hadn't gone two steps when a telekinetic hand grabbed him. Jean said, in a much harsher tone than she'd yet used, "You're asking us to put ourselves in serious danger. I think we're entitled to know why."

Cable turned around and looked at the three X-Men, standing defiant and still in the darkness, and told them a very, very small part of the truth: "He killed my wife. Aliya Jenskot. Satisfied?"

"No," Storm said, with a small shake of her head. "We are sorry."

"Don't be. She died in battle against En Sabah Nur; there is no greater honor for a warrior of the Askani," he said as he started walking again, repeating the phrase he'd heard so many times, from so many people. But the words were hollow to his own ears, and he knew without using his telepathy that he'd convinced exactly no one.

"The Askani are your family?"

Cyclops again. The boy had a right to be curious - more or less. Still, it was starting to get on Cable's nerves. "Clan. My family-"

He stopped in mid-sentence, hearing the faint hum of machinery behind the rough rock walls. "Hold it. Nobody move."

The three X-Men obediently froze.

He focused on the line where the left-hand wall met the ceiling, and was not surprised when the hum changed to a grinding noise and the wall suddenly shifted towards them. A quick glance revealed the right wall moving inward as well.

"I hate these damn things," he muttered, then, louder, ordered, "Run!"

The corridor was a straight shot, sloping downwards at an angle of approximately twenty degrees, and the floor began to vibrate slightly as the walls closed in, making their flight a bit trickier. Cable kept his footing, as did Storm, but the children stumbled.

"Wait - I can hold it back," Jean said, stopping and putting a hand to her forehead.

Without missing a beat, Cable turned, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her forward again with a none-too-gentle yank. "No you can't."

Ahead of them, electricity was flickering around Storm in a translucent aura. She was claustrophobic, a stray fact Cable had gleaned from his earlier telepathic foray into her mind, and he hoped she could keep it together until this was over.

The walls were very close now, barely three feet apart and narrowing by the moment. They passed beneath an open shaft in the ceiling and he looked over his shoulder, checking; the last thing they needed was one of Apocalypse's minions to come chasing after them.

"Cable!" Cyclops called.

The corridor ended in a blank stone wall with another gaping black hole in the floor in front of it. Cyclops and Storm had stopped mere inches from the hole, and were looking back at him expectantly.

"Take care of him," Cable told Jean, knowing she'd understand, and pushed her in Cyclops' direction. "Go!"

A telekinetic bubble appeared around the two kids and they jumped into the hole with no hesitation.

"I can't summon a wind in here," Storm said. Her voice was calm enough, but the electricity crackled brighter.

The walls were at two-and-a-half feet and closing. Infrared showed that the hole - more accurately, a mine-like shaft - was fifty feet deep. Nasty trap for humans: damned if you stayed, damned if you didn't. For mutants...

"Not a problem." He took hold of her arm and jumped, pulling her down with him into the blackness. His own telekinesis caught them and slowed their descent just as the walls rumbled shut with a resounding boom, sealing them in total darkness.

But not for long. Cable popped a flare and dropped it to the bottom of the shaft; he and Storm touched down a moment later. "You two okay?"

"Fine," Cyclops said, wiping dust from his visor. Jean was cautiously peering into the only exit, a broad corridor barely tall enough to accommodate Cable's height. "We just didn't expect to have lead roles in 'The Mummy Returns Again.' "

Cable didn't have the slightest idea what he was talking about, and he didn't care. He checked the HUD and said, "This is as far down as we go. There should be a reset device somewhere on this level, or another way out." The map didn't show one, but that wasn't fazing him. He started methodically sweeping the room with both his infrared and the gun.

From behind him, Storm asked, "How do you know?"

"I know Apocalypse." The gun bleeped softly, and his mouth twitched in a triumphant smile. "Here we go - there's a hidden door that leads to the surface. No traps."

"How do you know _that_?" Cyclops challenged. Cable had the distinct feeling that the younger mutant was starting to dislike him. A lot. _As if the family wasn't dysfunctional enough already_.

"It's his emergency access." He tapped the rock wall with the tip of his gun. "This is a refuge, the place he retreats to when he's injured..."

"And he might be too injured to teleport in," Jean finished.

"Yeah." Cable closed his eyes briefly and reached out with his telepathy, checking on the others. Rogue and Gambit were scaling the cliff above him, Mesmero waiting for them at the top, and Wolverine was holding his own against the Hand. Apocalypse's attention would be split between three battles; perfect.

"Divide and conquer," he said to no one in particular. The earlier twinge of a triumphant smile returned, but this time it was more of a smirk. "Let's move."

Once again, he led the way, pushing into the narrow corridor with infrared on. There were no traps here, and he hadn't expected any. Apocalypse was not predictable, generally speaking, except when it came to his lazarus chambers. Cable had raided one, the Askani had raided at least three more before he came of age, and they all held to the same basic structural design with a faithfulness that bordered on obsession. It didn't hurt that he and the Askani had also raided Apocalypse's citadel and found schematics for the old chambers, along with new ones.

After a few confined yards, the corridor abruptly opened into a wider, high-ceilinged entryway. The wall directly opposite them was not rough-hewn stone, but a pair of smooth metal doors that stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. They were covered in dust, with small piles of sand built up at the bottom edges from disuse, and Cable knew that Apocalypse had not been too weak to teleport in, nor to transport Mesmero elsewhere.

The doors gleamed dully under their layers of dust and grime, evidence of a former high shine, and set in the center, just above eye level, was a raised metal square. Inside the square was an etched outline of a hand; the lock mechanism. The entire effect was one of solidity, impenetrability, and permanence.

"Somehow, I don't think kicking is going to work," Cyclops said with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"No," Cable said, approaching the doors. "These are blast doors, three feet thick and made from a vanadium-adamantium alloy - probably the strongest metal on Earth. Plasma grenades will dent them, but that's about it."

Both the kids made exasperated noises at that, and Jean muttered, "Wunderbar."

Cable ignored them and ran his gun in a broad sweep over the door, wanting the sensors to back up what his telekinetic probe was telling him.

"What are you doing?" Jean asked.

"Looking for a weak spot."

"There's a weak spot?" Cyclops asked, sour humor still firmly intact.

"There's always a weak spot." The gun's sensors sounded again, a different noise this time. He drew an X in the dust, marking the place, and backed up to join the other three. "There. If we all hit that mark with everything we've got, we should be able to force our way in."

Storm asked, " 'Should'?"

"It's worked in the past," Cable said, raising his eyebrow in acknowledgement of the slight joke. Past, nothing.

"Okay, on three," Cyclops said, putting his hand to his visor. "One... two... _three_!"

A red energy beam slammed into the door, joined immediately by a blue-white lightning bolt of considerable size, an invisible wedge of psionic force, and the dual assault of Cable's primary weapon and his telekinesis.

The metal groaned, then warped inward, and then, after an agonizing moment of uncertainty, burst inwards and wrenched apart, leaving a roughly circular opening four feet in diameter. Cable started for it, but a restraining hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Stop," Storm said. "We've followed you this far, but we will not stand back and let you kill him. Whatever Apocalypse has done to you, whatever crimes he's committed, it doesn't sanction murder."

"X-Men don't kill," Cyclops added.

Cable glanced at them all in turn, then pulled away from Storm's hand. "We'll see."

He started for the opening again, muttering, "And it'll be a miracle if I even get the chance," under his breath - but judging from the frisson of worry that danced through the three minds behind him, he thought they might have heard him anyway.

The metal was warm, but not hot, and he climbed through the gap easily, dropping to the ground in the room beyond. Apocalypse's lazarus chamber.

It was a room as grand as the first chamber had been. This one had twin rows of columns, much like those in Amarnath Cave, and here, finally, there were decorations: a single line of hieroglyphs that wrapped around the walls and columns where they joined the ceiling. Cable recognized the glyphs as Apocalypse's personal signature: "The First One, bestowed with eternal life."

Not if Nathan Dayspring had anything to say about it.

The room was illuminated by unseen sources, casting an eldritch, pale blue glow over the stone. At the far end of the room, between the two lines of columns, lay a massive sarcophagus. It, too, was glowing, especially the hieroglyphs that covered it. It was not a stone sarcophagus, but a mix of metal and stone, with metal tubing and pipes snaking from its base into the wall behind it. A faint wisp of steam rose from it.

Cable checked to see if the X-Men had followed him; they had, looking wary and even a little afraid. Good. A little fear would keep them alive. He turned back to face the sarcophagus, drawing a second gun and holding them both at the ready.

"Apocalypse!" Cable shouted. His voice did not echo, as it should have, but was almost swallowed by the room instead. "Show yourself!"

There was a slow, scraping shudder, and then the sarcophagus yielded up its occupant and Apocalypse stood before them, in the light, once again.

This was not the same massive, towering figure that had greeted them in Amarnath Cave. He was still tall, but not quite so, and the bluish-violet metal bands of his armor seemed to hang on him, making him look thinner, even somewhat wasted. He remained an imposing figure for all that, and Cable knew full well that En Sabah Nur was more than he appeared.

"Such miserable, pathetic creatures," Apocalypse said. His voice was an inhumanly low bass rumble that could be felt in the floor and through the body. Cable remembered it. He also remembered that the Apocalypse of his time had not sounded so pained. "You have come a long way to die."

"There will be no death tonight," Storm said, stepping forward protectively with a graceful swirl of her cloak.

"Except yours," Cable added with a emphatic click of his gun. Storm gave him an unpleased look over her shoulder, which he barely registered - not that it would have mattered to him if he _had _seen it.

Apocalypse lowered his head, glaring at them with a dark look. "Fools. Did you think to catch me off-guard in my own sanctuary?"

Cable caught his meaning and spun to look behind him as a solid stone block dropped into place in front of the door. "That's not going to stop us," he said, turning back to face the tyrant.

The corner of Apocalypse's broad lips twitched in an unreadable expression. "Perhaps."

A series of clicks and whirs sounded from the columns directly in front of them, and then the room seemed to explode into a fury of death.

If the maze above had been lined with lasers, this single room was bursting with them. The blue-white beams sliced through the air from dozens of weapons mounted high on the columns and walls, and still more were fired by a handful of small, spider-like drones that spilled from nowhere. Even as he took cover and returned fire, Cable analyzed the situation the way he had been taught at Mother Askani's knee, so long ago. The stationary guns fired in a fixed pattern,  
while the drones adjusted to their targets. The latter were a more serious threat, but the whole thing was almost too easy.

Could Apocalypse have some plan behind the weak show of force? Without a doubt. Just what, though, Cable didn't know, and so he decided to substitute speculation for action. He dove behind another column and destroyed a cluster of stationary guns with a single shot, then checked on the X-Men.

To their credit, the X-Men were standing their ground. Storm was picking off machines with lightning, Cyclops was doing the same with his optic blasts, and Jean simply crushed the devices or wrenched them apart. Cable took out a pair of drones with a quick burst of gunfire, and while he was thus occupied, almost missed Apocalypse's next salvo.

"Should you choose to surrender now, the next few minutes will be much more pleasant for you," the tyrant announced. "I may even be persuaded to spare your lives altogether and find a place for you in my army."

"Not interested," Cable said, and fired at him.

Apocalypse took the shot full in his chest with only the slightest grunt. "So I see." And without further conversation, he unleashed another round of weapons from the walls and columns.

Caught in a firefight between a drone and a wall-mounted laser, Cable was unable to block the tyrant when Apocalypse extended one hand towards them. The limb grew and elongated, stretching like a rubber band across the room, and the fingers of his hand closed into a single, solid panel - which struck Jean on the side of her head with whiplike speed. She stumbled sideways from the impact, telekinesis failing.

"JEAN!" Cyclops managed to catch her before she fell, and turned on Cable with an angry, "You didn't tell us he could do _that_!"

"The subject never came up," Cable said, being more flippant than the situation called for. The truth was, he had forgotten. So much for preparedness.

Storm raised her arms, redirecting the lightning at Apocalypse. "Such tactics will get you nowhere," she said, loudly, and Cable wasn't sure whether she was talking to him or the ancient mutant standing before them. She took a few steps towards Apocalypse.

"Storm, stay back!" Cable shouted over the thunder crackling off her hands, but she continued to close the gap. Pressing the attack - a good idea, sometimes. This was not one of those times.

Apocalypse took the lightning without flinching, and quicker than any of the other mutants could react, reached out and grabbed Storm around the waist in one pincer-like hand. His face twisted into a truly inhuman expression of pure hate as he lifted her from the floor. In a voice that matched his face, he growled, "I could say the same, weather witch."

"Stop this! Let me go at once!"

Coming from anyone else, it might have seemed like an utterly pointless and even laughable demand, but the aura of bruised nobility surrounding her gave Storm's command a weight that caught even Apocalypse by surprise. He tilted his head and studied her for a moment. "Ororo. 'Beauty,' " he said, in a milder, almost amused tone. "Hardly a warrior's name."

Storm stared at him with disbelief. "How -" she started to ask - plainly the prelude to "How do you know my name" - but she was cut off by a sudden burst of mirthless laughter from the ancient mutant. The laughter died just as quickly as it had begun, and Apocalypse fixed her with a fanatical glare.

"I know more of this world than you can ever _dream_," he said, triumph lighting each word. "I have seen the bright flower of its civilizations, and the dark cruelty of its wildernesses. I have heard the secrets whispered by the souls of dead humanity and the stars that guard the heavens. I know this world with a greater depth and scope than any creature before or hence. That is why... I must destroy it."

The words hung in the air, freezing the X-Men in place with the sheer malevolence of it all. Cable, who had heard the rhetoric before and was not nearly as impressed, nonetheless found himself chilled as well. Apocalypse was more than evil - he was also insane. Not the best combination.

Apocalypse's triumphant demeanor suddenly shifted into a dark rage, and he tossed Storm across the room. She slammed into a column, cried out at the impact, and fell to the floor unmoving.

"For untold centuries I was locked in that wretched cage - imprisoned, like a common thief, by that cursed magician," Apocalypse snarled. He raised his fists, blue-violet energy glowing around them, and his voice rose with every word until the entire room shook from the booming echoes. "And now that I have regained my freedom, now that the world lies at my feet, begging to be conquered, begging me to fulfill my birthright, I WILL NOT LET A PACK OF USELESS CHILDREN STEAL IT FROM MY GRASP!"

He pointed his hands at the column above Storm, and the energy leapt from his fingers and blasted the stone. The column collapsed, raining down on Storm and burying her beneath the debris. Jean immediately took the brunt of the weight with her telekinesis, but with her injury, Cable could see that she wasn't going to be able to hold it for long.

And it didn't stop there: along with the physical attack, Apocalypse slid telepathic fingers into Storm's mind and pulled up every terrifying memory of confinement that he could find.

Cable felt it - he was sure Jean and Xavier felt it too - when the panic started.

Tongues of lightning began flickering through the rubble, making Jean's task all the harder. A larger bolt broke free with a sharp crack and scorched the ceiling. Cable couldn't help her physically; his meager reserve of TK was more or less exhausted, unless he wanted the virus to start running loose again. But he laid down a round of strafing fire, backing up Cyclops' optic blasts, and went to her aid on the psychic plane.

Ororo's mind at the moment was a dark and chaotic place, almost suffocating in its own harsh panic, and it took Cable precious seconds to find what he was looking for. When he did, though, he shoved it to the forefront of her mind, then cut Apocalypse's link with her and returned his own focus to the fight. The memory of flight through warm blue skies, high above the vast savanna, lingered with him for a moment longer, and then it too was gone.

The lightning display lessened considerably, and Jean shoved the rocks away to reveal a dirty but unharmed Storm. Apocalypse, 0; X-Men, 2.

Cable's moment of distraction had been a moment too long, however, and he snapped back to reality just as Apocalypse reached out, grabbed him, and threw him away without the slightest difficulty.

He hit the floor and slid, briefly, on the sand-covered rock, but was scrambling to his feet before the dust had finished rising into the air. And then, before he could take the steps that would put him back into the fight, he was brought to a halt by a single word.

_"SCOTT!"_

It was a shout both telepathic and verbal, a cry of such profound terror that it cut through his natural psychic shields and left him slightly disoriented from the emotion, and he remembered, suddenly, what Jean Grey would one day do to save Scott Summers.

Cable shook it off just in time to see Apocalypse swat Cyclops like an insect; the boy went flying and slammed into the base of the sarcophagus.

Apocalypse pinned him against the stone with one armored foot and raised his hand, aiming it directly at Cyclops. The tell-tale glow and crackle of energy appeared around his spread fingers. They had, at best, two seconds before Cyclops was blasted into nothingness.

Cable had thought about what might happen to him if he was successful in destroying Apocalypse. It had been an issue of some debate among the few people who'd known what he was going to attempt in this timejump. Would he, as Blaquesmith had warned, simply create a divergent timeline and leave his own future unchanged? Would he blink out of existence altogether? Or would he suddenly find himself in the future of this timeline, a soldier of the X fighting to realize the professor's dream as his parents had - not as Nathan Dayspring, the Askani'son, and not as Cable, the alias he'd chosen for this trip, but under his true name of Nathan Christopher Summers?

At the moment, the question was academic. If Apocalypse killed Cyclops, the question would become irrelevant altogether.

Cable was at a bad angle for a shot - there were columns in his line of sight - but he raised his gun anyway, on instinct. And then he stopped.

Because even though Storm was still too out of it to do anything, Jean Grey would go to great lengths to save Scott Summers.

The air of the room seemed to ripple and bend, and then the disabled weapons began ripping themselves from their moorings and flinging themselves with lethal speed directly at Apocalypse. The mutant batted and blasted them away, but one clipped his shoulder and he staggered backwards.

"You CHILD!" he thundered, furious, striding towards her and forgetting Cyclops altogether; the younger mutant climbed to his feet and made for the shelter of the columns. "Are you THAT eager to visit Osiris?"

Jean's only answer was to send a massive chunk of stone flying at his face.

Apocalypse dodged it and opened fire on her; the girl had a TK shield up, but it shattered almost immediately under the onslaught. She ducked behind the nearest column as the energy blasts continued.

Cable, meanwhile, had reached a better position and now pumped the barrel of his plasma rifle twice before taking careful aim and shooting Apocalypse in the center of his chest. The tell-tale glow spread out for a few inches, staining the deep blue armor a golden orange, then vanished. A second later, the hit portion of the armor starting bubbling.

Apocalypse stopped firing at Jean and looked down. "What is this tr-"

He didn't get to finish the sentence, though, because the armor erupted outward with a wet, ripping sound that metal was not supposed to make. Apocalypse cried out in pain - in true, genuine pain, a sweet sound to Cable's ears - and retreated backwards towards his sarcophagus, clutching the gaping hole in his chest.

It was time for the endgame. Cable reached out with his telepathy to find Professor Xavier. Xavier, along with Wolverine, was just outside the canyon entrance to the tomb. The Hand ninjas had vanished once again - where, it didn't concern him, as long as they weren't running to play backup for Apocalypse. _Your students are done here, Professor_.

_Indeed they are_, came the reply. _Good luck, Askani'son_.

Cable severed the connection and started one with Cyclops. It was a bit disorienting to find himself inside this particular mind - _not even a glint in his eye yet_, he thought to himself - but he said, _You remember the way out_?

_Yes_, Cyclops answered immediately.

_Then go. Seal the door if you can. Xavier and Wolverine are already outside again - you get out of here NOW._

_Wait a minute - we're not leaving you behind!_

_...If you embrace this path of destiny, he will be lost to you forever..._

The irony was not lost on Cable. 'But you will,' he wanted to say, 'you will abandon me one day, and without the slightest regret.' Instead, he forced down the thoughts of his lost family and said, _I've got my own ticket out of here. Just go. Save your team._

_No,_ he started to protest, but Cable wasn't going to have it.

_If you stay, you'll die. GO!_

Cyclops was clearly wavering. Jean tugged on his arm with a telepathic, _Come on_, and that seemed to decide it for him. Without any further debate, he turned and ran for the door. Jean followed, but Storm hesitated.

He caught a faint whisper from her mind - _Bright Lady, protect him_ - and then she too was gone. A heavy thud sounded against the other side of the door, and Cable knew that he and Apocalypse were trapped inside.

Apocalypse chuckled. The wound in his chest had already begun to knit back together, even without the aid of his sarcophagus' regenerative technology. "It seems you have been abandoned by your fellow soldiers."

"I'm not afraid to face you alone," Cable growled, discarding his empty rifle and withdrawing a full gun from the holster on his waist. He also withdrew a compact metal device that was only slightly smaller than the one he'd used to blast the cave wall open. He kept it hidden from the other mutant's sight, and out of his thoughts; no point in giving away his trump card before he needed to.

"There is such a thing as courage," Apocalypse said, almost meditatively. "I know, for I have seen it. There is also such a thing as stupidity masked as courage. I have seen _that_ many more times. And you, soldier, though you bear the scars of battle upon you - I believe that your courage is a mask."

"Believe whatever you want," Cable said, firing at the other mutant's head. "You're still going to die!"

Apocalypse dodged the shot entirely, and retaliated with an energy blast that caught Cable full in the chest. "I think _not_."

Cable was driven backwards by the force of the blast, though not actually injured; his body armor had been designed with Apocalypse in mind. He tripped over his discarded weapon and fell. The gun in his hand, along with the bomb, went skidding across the floor.

Swiftly, Apocalypse grabbed him around the waist with one massive hand and reeled him in until they were less than three feet apart. Apocalypse held him up like a prize catch, and sneered. "You have been defeated, soldier, and by a mistake so simple only a novice would make it. Is this the best defense this miserable civilization has to offer - a foolish old man who stumbles over his own weapons?"

"Nah. You forgot the pack of useless kids," Cable said, almost gasping out the words as Apocalypse's hand tightened around his ribcage, steadily suffocating him. He felt bones beginning to crunch, and knew he'd be feeling the consequences of this encounter for quite some time. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was the bomb and the gun lying next to it.

Apocalypse had made a crucial mistake himself, in lifting Cable above him: Cable could now see the weapons on the floor, and if he could see them, he could move them.

Plasma-based weapons - typically guns, rifles, and cannons - were powerful and relatively compact, which was why the Askani had adopted them. The magnetic shields that contained the plasma were sturdy, not easily breached, and they were reliable, long-lasting weapons.

The thing that made them a bit tricky to handle was that, if the magnetic shields were breached, they detonated in a big way. Without the shields, the plasma (which was after all the same stuff that the sun was made of) would expand in a chain reaction that made twenty-first century nuclear bombs look mild by comparison. Cable ordinarily took great pains to avoid damaging his weapons, but right now he was counting on it.

He used his telekinesis to nudge the gun and the bomb into position directly under Apocalypse, right between the mutant's feet where the explosion would cause maximum harm. And to keep Apocalypse distracted, he pulled his metal arm - his stronger arm - free and fired a blast in Apocalypse's face with the small gun he kept hidden in his glove. The other mutant howled in incoherent rage, loosening his hold on Cable momentarily as he put a hand to his face in pain.

It would have been the perfect opportunity to escape if he wanted to, but he didn't. Not at all.

"Remember it, Apocalypse - the name's Cable." A telekinetic push of a button armed the bomb. Five seconds.

"Annoying insect! You are not _worthy_ of remembrance!" Apocalypse shouted, white teeth flashing in his blackened, blasted face, and squeezed him tighter, this time with both hands. Cable did nothing. Let the monster think he'd won; it wouldn't matter in...

Three...

"Bodyslide by one," Cable said through gritted teeth. He had to time this perfectly...

Two...

He met Apocalypse's red eyes, the golden flare of telekinesis spilling from his own as he held the bomb in position, and silently wished the ancient mutant a painful and agonizing death.

One...

"- Graymalkin bound!"

Zero.

* * *

Gambit and Rogue hiked to the far edge of the canyon plateau (after he'd given Mesmero a few farewell kicks for good measure), then picked their way down the crumbling cliffside and across the flat ground to the Blackbird, a matte-black smudge against the night sky. 

Rogue, bless her Southern heart, gave him a quick tutorial on the radio and then left the plane to give him some privacy. A few minutes and one agonizing call later, he found her sitting on the steps of the Blackbird's boarding ramp, staring absently at the canyon.

"Ready?"

She jumped slightly and turned to look up at him. "Yeah. Did you... take care of everything?"

The solution had been simple, once he'd thought of it, and painful in its elegance. "_Oui_. Called a guy I know, small-arms dealer, owed me a favor. We cut a deal - I forget I know him, he do a couple things for me."

She still hadn't stood up, so he sat down next to her. Apparently her earlier rush to help her X-friends was gone. Maybe she was more concerned about him than he thought.

Without looking at him, she asked, "Like what?"

"Things," he repeated, being evasive on purpose; Rogue didn't need to know Henri's body was going be stolen from the Parisian morgue, where it was being held pending completion of the police investigation, and illegally transported back to New Orleans. "He's gonna make a few calls, get a contract put on Mesmero - though word is the Hand already lookin' for him."

"Ouch."

He nodded. "And this guy, the one I don't know anymore, is gonna get the blood feud to stop."

"The blood feud between your guild and that other one," she said, looking surprised. "The feud no one can stop."

He nodded again.

Surprise turned to outright skepticism and she crossed her arms over her chest. "And how's he gonna do _that_?"

"By tellin' everyone a story 'bout how it wasn't the Guild sent Henri to rob an Assassin house, it was me an' Mesmero."

He watched, numb, as understanding flooded her pale features, along with a vaguely horrified expression. "But that means... you'll never be able to go home. Doesn't it?"

He nodded again and sighed, long and low. "Yeah."

"Oh God," she said faintly, still looking at him with that horrified expression.

Before it changed to pity, he flashed a sunny grin and nudged her arm. "But I got a place wit' y'all, right? Long as you don't make Remy wear one a' those dork-patrol uniforms."

She nodded immediately, a small grin flittering across her own face, and opened her mouth to say something else, but the black watch strapped to her wrist beeped and crackled to life. Cyclops' voice shouted, "Rogue! Where are you?"

She gave him a swift look reading 'see, they _do_ need me, you jerk,' and answered, "By the Blackbird, gettin' ready to come help y'all."

"Forget it. Start the jet and prep for launch, NOW!"

"You can do that?" Remy asked her, curious. He was pretty sure he could've hot-wired it, but getting the thing off the ground was another matter altogether.

"Sure, but I can't fly it." To the communicator, she said, "Why? What's goin' on?"

A flare of static was the only response, along with a deep rumble that shook the ground slightly beneath their feet. Moving figures appeared at the mouth of the canyon, running flat-out, and Gambit realized it was the other X-Men. It looked like Wolverine and Stormy were carrying the professor between them.

Rogue ran up the steps of the plane and the engines started warming up almost immediately.

Another quake rumbled through the ground, and this time a blinding white explosion filled the canyon, lighting the desert as though it was noon, and raced on toward the running figures and the jet.

Remy looked on the bright side: close as he was to the source of the explosion, Mesmero was probably toast.

The blast wave hit, knocking him back against the jet and rocking the jet itself. He'd raised his hand automatically to shield his eyes against the light, and lowered it now as the glare faded to see what had become of the X-Men. A faint ripple surrounded them, bending the light; it took him a moment to figure out that it was a telekinetic forcefield. Obviously came in handy, having a telekinetic around.

The X-Men closed the distance to the jet quickly, with the dust-choked, smoking debris of the canyon making an impressive backdrop even in the dark. For the first time since he'd met up with the team, he wondered if they did this kind of stuff every day.

He greeted them with, "What happened?"

"Cable set off an explosion inside the golden room," Cyclops said, breathing hard. "Apocalypse is history."

Remy looked at the other three X-Men, not surprised. Big explosions tended to do that to a body. "That so?"

The professor nodded; Remy had to be impressed with a guy who managed to look dignified and distinguished even when he was being carried like a sack of potatoes. "Yes. And we should leave before the Egyptian military arrives to investigate."

"After you, _mes braves_," Gambit said with a grand gesture, which none of them seemed to appreciate. He waited until the X-Men, his new colleagues, boarded - he wouldn't call them "family" yet, if ever - and then he got onto the Blackbird himself.

He did not look back.

* * *

Bonus Note: I found this poem while I was writing Chapter 14; it's "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It's actually more fitting for one of Apocalypse's servants in the comics - Ozymandias (duh) - but I've always thought of it as relating to Apocalypse himself. Maybe because Beast quoted it in TAS. I dunno. But here it is. Enjoy!

I met a traveller from an antique land  
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone  
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,  
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,  
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,  
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read  
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,  
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;  
And on the pedestal these words appear:  
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:  
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"  
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay  
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare  
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


	15. Interlude: The Alpha

Note: A stadion is an ancient unit of distance, measuring approximately 600 feet. Te Pito O Te Henua is the ancient name of what we call Easter Island (which is properly called Rapa Nui).

* * *

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.- Revelation 22:13

* * *

INTERLUDE

He was eternal.

However, it galled to know that he lived only because his enemy had miscalculated. The man called Cable had attempted the same maneuver twice, little realizing that the intelligence of En Sabah Nur had anticipated such a move from the moment the band of mutant pests had entered his golden room.

He was indestructible.

For all the technology at Cable's disposal, the soldier had been no more successful than the Babylonians with their swords and firesticks. No more successful than the primitive inhabitants of Te Pito O Te Henua with their obsidian spears. No more successful than any of the  
thousands who had sought to destroy him, the Eternal and Everlasting.

Miserable creatures, all of them. Why they continued to believe that they could defeat him was a mystery.

Still, his victory was not so absolute as he might have desired. His golden room lay in smoldering, dust-shrouded ruins, its regenerative technology crushed beyond repair - and that loss, he knew, would cost him dearly in the battles to come. As much as he burned to lash out at his enemies and conquer the world that was rightfully his, he could no longer afford to throw his power about with such unguarded profligacy. Now was the time for restraint, careful planning, and conservation of resources. And, most assuredly, revenge.

Standing atop the cliffs that had once overlooked his tomb, he reached out with his mind for his servant and found him several stadia away, running scared from shadowed, unseen figures. He knew what had happened to his servant: the boy-thief's attack and subsequent sleight-of-hand. An ingenius ploy, to be sure, and one that rendered his servant useless, for a man marked for death held no value.

That only made his next actions easier.

Apocalypse severed his telepathic connection with Mesmero, abandoning the fool to the fate he had earned, and went in search of someone more... helpful.

END INTERLUDE


	16. The End and the Beginning

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

Jean didn't want to go back to school. It was Sunday, late in the afternoon, and even though she was physically ready to head off to BHS the next morning, she wasn't sure she was mentally up to it. After a rollercoaster of a battle with a creature of unstoppable power, she didn't feel like returning to face the stresses of high school - utterly normal stresses that included traitorous friends, annoying boyfriends, maintaining a flawless GPA, and the general envy and dislike of the student body at large. No, who _wouldn't_ want to go back to that? 

Another fight with Apocalypse almost looked good in comparison.

Instead of dwelling on it, _again_, she decided to focus on the moment, which meant relaxing in the kitchen with Rogue, Scott, and Wolverine - possibly the three least-relaxed people in the Institute - and watching Evan scour the fridge for milk while Kurt ate his way through a package of cookies. _They're going to ruin their appetites_, she thought, then realized she was sounding like her mother and shuddered.

To distract herself from the original distraction, she asked the others at the table the first thing that came to her mind: "So there's still no sign of Cable?"

Scott, who had spent most of the day discussing the battle with Beast and Professor X, leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "The professor's sure he made it out alive, but he can't find him. Cerebro has nothing."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Wolverine said, then paused, suddenly on alert. "Wait - where's the Cajun?"

Evan took a break from scavenging long enough to say, "Uh - outside, I think. Why?"

With a truly angry growl, Logan popped his claws and charged out of the room. "Because _someone_ just started my motorcycle!"

Kurt exclaimed, "This I've got to see!" and ran after him. Evan followed at top speed, milk search abandoned.

Jean exchanged a glance with Scott and Rogue. The other girl looked like she was torn between frowning and laughing.

"He wouldn't... would he?" Rogue asked.

Jean wasn't sure whether she was talking about Remy stealing the bike or Wolverine gutting him for it. Either way, there were going to be fireworks.

Scott grinned. "Only one way to find out."

The younger students were out on the lawn, playing no-powers frisbee and, as usual, cheating badly. Jean opened the door just as Remy, on Logan's bike, screeched to a stop at the base of the steps and held out a helmet. "Come on, chere!"

Rogue gave him an incredulous look and demanded, "Are you _crazy_?"

Wolverine emerged from the garage, shaking his head as if in pain, and promptly set off towards the thief. Despite the limited amount of time before the older mutant reached him, Remy took a few seconds to flash a truly killer smile. "_Oui_. You comin'?"

Rogue glanced at the approaching Wolverine, then ran down the steps, grabbed the helmet, and jumped on the back of the bike. Remy immediately opened the throttle and they roared off with Wolverine in hot pursuit.

The younger students had stopped their game and gathered by the steps. At Rogue's act of willful disobedience, half of the kids cheered. The other half had a more practical reaction.

"They're gonna clean the Danger Room for a year," Bobby said, with the authority of someone who knew what he was talking about.

Jubilee nodded. "Every day, before _and_ after school."

"With toothbrushes," Sam added.

"That's _if_ they come back," Kurt countered.

Evan frowned. "You think they won't?"

"No, I think he's going to catch up with them and kill them. I mean, they took his motorcycle!"

The motorcycle in question was clearing the Institute's gates. Wolverine hadn't given up, but on the open road, he had a much smaller chance at catching them. Show thus over, the students dispersed, leaving Jean and Scott standing at the top of the steps.

Scott shook his head, chuckling slightly. "Kurt's right; I wouldn't rule out the possibility."

"Me either." Privately, she hoped Wolverine wouldn't drag them back; riding off on the stolen bike, for the first time in a long time, Rogue had looked... happy. Maybe Remy would turn out to be a good addition to the school after all. She'd had her doubts, especially after the professor had caught him trying to filch the really _nice_ silverware not five minutes after they'd returned from Egypt.

"So..." Scott said, looking about as uncomfortable as she felt with the lapse in conversation. "Um... did you get the feeling that Cable wasn't telling us everything?"

"Only about fifty times," she said lightly.

He didn't smile, but she could tell he wanted to. "Good. I thought it might've just been me."

"Nope," she said, then paused for a moment as a half-forgotten impression resurfaced. "You know, when he was telling you to leave, I got this telepathic flash. He was thinking about his father. And there was that thing about his wife... I don't know if that was sad or just... weird."

Scott tilted his head back. "Hard to imagine someone like Cable as having a family."

"Mm-hm," she murmured absently, then mentally kicked herself for forgetting. "Family" was an off-limits topic with Scott - not because he didn't want to talk about it, but because she didn't want to bring him any more pain. She glanced at him and felt even worse; he was staring at the sky, a melancholy set to his shoulders. Wanting to make amends, she stepped closer to him and did something she would probably not have dared to do otherwise: took his hand.

He started slightly and looked down, but didn't pull away. And for that, she was grateful. Once upon a time, they'd been able to do things like this with no thought to it whatsoever, but the world had changed. _They_ had changed, and she could only hope it was going to be for the better.

Softly, she said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay," he said, giving her a lopsided smile. "I just - I miss them."

She didn't say anything to that, simply squeezing his hand in reassurance. His hand was warm and dry, and she could feel the calluses running along the base of his fingers; not a result of sports, although he played, but of hundreds of hours logged in flight training.

"I thought finding Alex would make it better, but it didn't," he said after a long moment. "It hurts more, in a way - knowing that I got a part of my family back, but Mom and Dad are still gone."

"I'm sorry," she said again. He nodded, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around hers before he let go. She curled her hand around the ghost warmth he'd left behind, already missing the contact, and wondered how many furtive hearts she'd draw in notebooks because of this. "They would be proud of you, you know."

"I guess so," he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his khakis as though he too missed the contact. Was it too much to hope that he felt it - whatever "it" was?

She could find out, of course. He wasn't a psi, he had no real defenses to speak of; even a total novice like herself could do it. Just slip into his mind and rummage around until she found what she was looking for.

And violate every shred of ethics she had.

The old-fashioned way was better. Riskier, but better. Clearing her throat, she said, somewhat more tentatively than she would've liked, "_I'm_ proud of you."

His eyebrows went up. "Really?"

"Really."

A faintly embarrassed but pleased expression crossed his face. "Uh... thanks."

She smiled. "You're welcome."

And then she changed the topic, and they stood on the steps of the Institute talking about everything and nothing until the sun had all but disappeared and Wolverine finally returned, empty-handed and cursing so furiously that both Professor Xavier and Storm reprimanded him. And then, a little reluctantly, everyone went inside for dinner.

And - to Jean at least - the fast-approaching future seemed as bright and full of promise as two names linked within a heart.


	17. Epilogue

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  
- Revelation 22:13

* * *

EPILOGUE 

The laboratory was not a laboratory in the strictest sense of the word. Certainly, it housed experiments and equipment, but it also served as a library of sorts, holding the accumulated data and... other memorabilia... of a long lifetime of research.

The polished metal walls had seen much darkness over the years. They had seen what some would call the face of evil itself, but never had they seen the scourge which appeared now within their confines, silent as a desert breeze. That was only understandable, as no one - save a battered handful of mutants - had seen him for nearly two thousand years.

"Ah, my prodigal servant," the deep voice said. "And who are you scheming to betray now?"

The man who had once been Dr. Nathaniel Essex prided himself on never being surprised. When one dealt in such delicate and elaborate machinations as he did, it was imperative that one anticipate every possibility, no matter how remote. Nonetheless, this visit caught him completely off-guard.

He started and spun around, the papers in his white hands cascading to the tiled floor. "En Sabah Nur -!"

From a mere meter away, the massive being gave off the distinct scent of time and death - two things Essex was familiar with, if not enamored of. "Call me Apocalypse. It was you, after all, who suggested the name."

"Indeed." He was thoroughly unsettled, but he wasn't about to show it, and he turned his back on the looming monstrosity. "Lovely to meet you in person, after all these years."

"Indeed," Apocalypse said, deliberately mocking. "I see you have not squandered my gifts, tinkerer, although there is a noticeable lack of that which you promised me."

"I don't have time to build your little army. My work is more important-" he started to say, but was cut off as thick blue fingers wrapped around his throat.

Apocalypse lifted him from his feet easily and brought him within inches of his own face. "By my will alone were you given the chance to conduct your work, Essex; by my will alone do you survive this encounter today! DO NOT FORGET IT!" he thundered, and tossed Essex away.

The scientist landed at the foot of a row of specimen cages, jarring them and setting the specimens - in this instance, Rhesus monkeys - to screeching and howling. One glare from his blood-red eyes and the creatures quieted immediately, withdrawing into the far corners of their cages. He stood and straightened his black outfit, irritated at Apocalypse but not intending to do anything. Such petty displays of power were a tedious yet necessary requirement of tyrants, he had learned, and it was beneath his dignity to rage in response.

"Tell me, Essex, in all your research these hundred years, have you heard of a band of mutant pests called the X-Men?" Apocalypse asked calmly, arms folded behind his back in a military posture.

It was a foolish question at best. Essex was keeping a very close eye on two of them - remarkable specimens who would one day lead to the culmination of those hundred years of research. "Perhaps. I'll have to check my files."

"I had hoped to use them as the first soldiers in my 'little army,' " the ancient mutant went on. He picked up a sheaf of papers in one massive hand and glanced at them with a disinterested expression. "Instead, I will crush their rotting skulls beneath my heel."

Essex, always a master at reading between the lines, allowed his mouth to curl in a half-smirk while storing the information for a later date. "Ah, but if they defeated you, then your own rules declare them fit for survival, do they not?"

Apocalypse dropped the papers and gave his wayward servant a burning, narrowed-eyed glare, much reminiscent of the glare Essex had just given the monkeys; he found the implication... displeasing. "The years have not softened your insolent tongue, Essex. I should have enslaved your mind at the first."

"I have failsafes in place now," Essex said, with such casualness that the threat showed plainly. "Alter my psi print in any way, and... well, you'll see."

Apocalypse made a noise that might have been a growl in someone less imposing. "You will begin to build my army immediately."

Essex waved him off and risked turning his back on the mutant again. "As I explained to you a century ago, it is not that simple. I have the technology now, true. But I continue to lack the _subjects_."

"Find them."

Inwardly, Essex seethed. It didn't help that he knew precisely where a large population of mutants - some with true potential - could be found. The colony had been founded by another like himself, a geneticist who had unfortunately been less proficient in deceit. With his  
"colleague" disposed of, he'd been hoping to keep the colony for future experiments, but now his hand had been forced. Failsafes or not, Apocalypse could ferret out the information; it was far easier, not to mention safer, to cooperate with the tyrant.

For the moment. Only for the moment. Yes, Essex decided, this would do very nicely as a temporary arrangement. The true victor used chance opportunities to his advantage, after all, and Apocalypse's ridiculous demand provided a veritable fountain of such opportunities.

He turned around, hands clasped behind his back with an air of defeat. "I owe you that much, I suppose. Any... special requests?"

Apocalypse stared past him, at some vision only a mad Egyptian god could see, and said, "The tales you told of that tome called 'Bible' have always intrigued me. Create for me the Four Horsemen."

"As you wish, my dread lord," Essex said, bowing slightly from the waist as once he had bowed before the upper echelons of Victorian London - and as in the past, the bow served to hide his distaste at humbling himself before an inferior. When he rose, Apocalypse was gone.

Essex flicked an imaginary bit of dust from his gleaming black outfit, thinking, and made his way out of the laboratory. To raid the Morlock colony and retrieve the desired mutants, he would need proper hunters. Perhaps one of his former associates from that laughable Weapon X program could supply him with a killer or five... and there was the small matter of creating an alias for himself - something appropriately _sinister_...

END EPILOGUE

* * *

Note: Well, that was it! Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it... well, except for the parts where I was tearing my hair out. Bonus points if you spotted all the references to the comic books (like Gambit's first appearance - UXM #266, taking place in Cairo, IL). 

Last but not least, here's the part where I thank people, starting with: everyone who reviewed this - feedback is the stuff of gods, truly, and I greatly appreciate all of your comments. Y'all are the best!

And, of course, a special thanks goes to Alhazred for many things: writing a splendid Apocalypse fic, "Walpurgis Night," that also manages to make fun of nearly every fic convention there is; and the boundless support, enthusiasm, writerly commiseration, and sparkling conversation that helped me finish this darn thing. Oh, and 'SotS'. :)


End file.
